THE 



MEN OF THE WAR. 



BY 

OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT. 



The Empeeoe Feancis Joseph. 
The Peince of Peussia. 
Peince Paskiewitsch. 
Geneeal Baeaguay d'Hilliees. 
King op Geeece. 
Maeshal de St. Aenaud. 
Reschid Pacha. 



Peince Goetschakoff. 
Count Oeloff. 

Vice-Ad. Paeseval Deschenes. 
Vice-Admieal Hamelin. 
The Sultan. 
Omae Pacha. 
Peince Menschikoff. 




LONDON: 

DAVID BRYCE, 48, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 



PAGE 

I. The Emperor Francis Joseph * . • 1 

II. The Prince of Prussia . . • . , . 12 

III. Prince Paskiewitsch . , » • . .23 

IV. General Baraguay d'Hilliers . • . . 38 
V. King of Greece .•»•••• 50 

VI. Marshal de St. Arnaud • » . • . 59 

VII. Reschid Pacha 72 

VIII. Prince Gortschakoff . ♦ • . . • 90 » 

IX. Count Orloff 100 

X. Vice- Admiral Parseval Deschenes . • ♦ 11% 

XI. Vice- Admiral Hamelin . . . • ; 118 

XII. The Sultan v K 124, 

XIIL Omar Pacha 134 

XIV. Prince Menschikoff 146 



THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

4> 

I. 

EMPEROE FRANCIS JOSEPH. 
Dark and lowering clouds hung over the House of 
Hapsburg towards the close of 1848. Italy was in 
open insurrection ; all Hungary was in arms for inde- 
pendence ; the population of Vienna had just been 
reduced to subjection by the shot and shell of Win- 
dischgraetz, and the savage Croats of Jellachich; the 
fidelity of all the provinces of the empire was more 
than doubtful; the Emperor and the Imperial and 
Royal family were skulking in dismay at Olmutz ; 
everything, indeed, seemed to indicate that mighty 
Austria, which had been built up in the course of 
centuries by the labours of sagacious rulers and states- 
men — by intrigues, treasons, and crimes of all kinds — 
by fortunate marriages and bloody wars — was about to 
fall to pieces like a tempest-tossed wreck on a rocky 
shore; and that the ancient and haughty families in 
whom her destinies were concentrated and personified 
were as the Stewarts and the Bourbons, about to 
be stripped ignominiously of all their wealth; power, 

1 



2 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

and glory, and be driven forth as exiles and wanderers 
on the earth. At that fearful moment an energetic 
man and an energetic woman resolved to make a grand 
effort to save the trembling and sinking imperial house. 
The woman was the Archduchess Sophia, and the man 
the Prince of Schwarzenberg ; and what they did was 
to wrest the sceptre from the feeble grasp of the Em- 
peror Ferdinand, who was weak in mind and diseased 
in body — little better than a veritable cretin, in fact ; 
to make the next heir, the Archduke Francis Charles, 
the Emperor's brother, sign his renunciation of it ; and 
to place it in the hands of Francis Joseph, a boy only 
eighteen, son of that Archduke and of the said Sophia. 

Of this young Prince the Vienna people knew little, 
and what they did know was not of a nature to make 
him beloved. For they had been told that he was 
haughty and imperious, and scorned the kindly good 
feeling and homely simplicity which Austrian princes 
had always displayed towards their subjects, and espe- 
cially to the Viennese. They knew that exaggerated 
notions of his "right divine to govern wrong" had been 
carefully instilled into his mind by M. de Bombelles, a 
{stupid old French emigre, to whom the superintendence 
of his education had been confided, and by " Madame 
Sophy," as they called his mother, who, in their opinion, 
is one of the most intriguing, crafty, hard-hearted, and 



EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH. 3 

spiteful princesses of all Germany, and whom, therefore, 
they bitterly hate. Then they were told that the young 
Emperor had descended to the baseness of falsehood to 
secure the crown ; for that the Emperor Ferdinand 
having hesitated to sign his abdication, Schwarzenberg 
and the Archduchess, to terrify him, had told him that 
the people were clamouring for it ; whereupon the poor 
Sovereign, believing that the people, in spite of his 
intellectual infirmity, had always loved him well, and 
that it was not against him personally that they had 
risen in insurrection, but against the system of bad 
government which he had been unable to alter or con- 
trol — the poor Sovereign, believing this, turned to his 
nephew, who was standing by his side, and asked him 
in a tone of poignant sorrow, "Is it really true, Francis, 
that the people wish me to abdicate ? " To which the 
young man boldly replied, " It is, sire !" though he knew 
well that not a single wish of the kind had been 
expressed by anyone except by his mother and Schwar- 
zenberg. Moreover, the manner in which he caused 
his accession to the throne to be announced gave dis- 
satisfaction and disgust — dissatisfaction, because he took 
the designation of " Emperor, by the grace of God," 
whereas, in virtue of the liberal Constitution promised 
to the Austrians, it had been expected that that old 
formula would have been laid aside, and that the sove- 



4 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

reigns would base their right solely on the Constitution 
and the popular will — disgust, deep and profound, 
"because he made Schwarzenberg, the moment his uncle's 
signature to the abdication was extorted, hurry to the 
Diet, then sitting at Kremsier, and proclaim him in 
the sesemi-blasphemous, semi-grotesque terms : "In the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost, I have the honour to announce to the Diet that 
Ferdinand has ceased to reign, and that Francis Joseph 
is Emperor ! " 

It was, then, under no favourable auspices that the 
youthful Sovereign commenced his sway. JS*or did the 
events which subsequently occurred lessen the bad im- 
pression against him : an contraire. In the first place, 
he, in a solemn proclamation, declared that " he was 
convinced of the high value of liberal institutions was 
u ready to admit the representatives of the nation to a 
share in his rights ;" knew that it was only " on the 
basis of true liberty that anything durable could be 
founded;" and that "he solicited the co-operation of 
the representatives of the people in making the laws 
together with many other fine things of the same kind. 
Yet no very long time elapsed before he abolished the 
Constitution, blotted out every vestige of liberty, and 
re-established the most absolute power. In the second 
place, he caused the most ruthless severity to be dis- 



EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH. 5 

played in quelling the insurrectionary movement in his 
Italian provinces ; and he prosecuted the war against 
Piedmont with what he called vigour, but which, per- 
haps, might have as fitly been designated atrocity. In 
the war in Hungary, he allowed, if he did not actually 
order, his generals to act with barbarity not one whit 
inferior to that which the hideous Russians exercise in 
Moldavia and Wallachia ; and finding himself, in spite 
of it, unable to subdue the insurrection, he descended 
to the disgrace and humiliation of accepting the aid of 
an army of the Czar. Then he established the state of 
siege in nearly all the provinces of the empire, and by 
means of it oppression was exercised which made the 
people groan. He kept up an immense army, and for 
its maintenance burdened the nation with enormous 
taxes. He not only did not amend, but positively 
aggravated, the scandalous abuses which had grown up 
under the corrupt government of his ancestors for 
centuries. What was worse than all, he on all occasions 
displayed a callousness to human sufferings which would 
have been disgusting to any man, and which was abso- 
lutely abominable in one so very young. Thus, when 
Italy was " pacified," executions became the order of 
the day ; and the insurgents who by flight escaped his 
clutches were deprived of every farthing of their pro- 
perty, and thereby reduced to beggary in a foreign 



6 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

land ; nay, persecuted even there. In Hungary, scenes 
scarcely less horrible than those which frighted Europe 
in 1687, when, for nine long months, a scaffold was 
erected in the town of Eperies, and daily — daily ! — was 
occupied in slaying victims ; a massacre which, for length 
of duration, was unexampled — scenes scarcely less 
atrocious than these were witnessed, Not a day passed 
for weeks together without scores of unfortunate 
wretches being hanged by the neck or shot down like 
dogs, and amongst them were some of the noblest in 
the land ; Batthyany, to wit. Nay, even women were 
scourged, and the little properties of small farmers and 
poor people were wantonly laid waste. To such an 
extent was the ferocious persecution carried, that even 
the hard heart of Nicholas the Czar was moved, and 
he, in the name of humanity and policy, intreated for 
mercy for the victims ; but Francis Joseph, either from 
pride of his power, or pleasure in the exercise of it, 
returned a stern negative ; and the bloody work went * 
bravely on. Nor was this all. Most tyrants have their 
melting moods, but Francis Joseph was never known 
to have one. Not a single pardon for any condemned 
or exiled victim could ever be extorted from him ; and 
when weeping wives, and mothers, and sisters have 
thrown themselves on their knees before him, in his 
own palace, in the public streets, wherever they could 



EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH. 7 

gain access to him, and have implored, in heart-rending 
accents, pity for them and theirs, he has always sternly 
refused, and not unfrequently spurned the suppliants 
with his foot! Another fact which shows his cha- 
racter is, that when all Europe was crying out with 
indignation against the atrocities of Haynau in Hun- 
gary, he could not understand what the outcry meant ; 
but declared that all that that bad man had done was 
simply just severity, and accordingly extended to him 
his warmest friendship* Indeed, so stern, persecuting, 
and pitiless is his heart, that an eminent Austrian 
statesman has declared that, supposing no wonderful 
change take place, which is perhaps hardly to be 
expected, history, at the end of his career, will have 
to brand him with the epithet of " Cruel," as it has 
done to Pedro of Arragon, or " Ferocious," as Ivan of 
Russia. 

But let us be just. What we have said shows but 
the dark side of the juvenile Caesar's character; and 
that character has its fairer side like that of other men. 
And first, there is no denying that, for his years, he is 
possessed of extraordinary energy and decision. This 
was proved by the part, discreditable though it was, 
which he played in causing his uncle's abdication; 
proved again by the haughty manner in which, shortly 
after, he threw off the leading-strings which his mother, 

I 

i 




8 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

for ambitious purposes of her own, wished to keep him, 
and told her plainly, " Madam ! I am the Emperor, and 
the Emperor I will be ! " — proved likewise when, on 
being asked on the death of Schwartzenberg to whom 
he would confide the government, he replied in nearly 
the same terms as were employed by Louis XIV. on a 
similar occasion, "I will govern myself!" — and it is 
proved more strongly still by the manner in which he 
has crushed the spirit of revolt in his empire, and 
moulded everything to his will — a difficult task! In 
foreign policy, too, his energetic spirit has manifested 
itself, as well as in personal or domestic matters. Eor 
example, when his own empire was only just beginning 
to recover from the mighty convulsions which threatened 
it with destruction, he positively ordered the King of 
Prussia not to accept the crown of the German empire, 
offered by the Parliament of Frankfort, and prepared 
to support his order, arms in hand; on a later occa- 
sion, he bullied the same King into compliance with 
his views on the Zollverein question; having, as he 
thought, cause to complain of the conduct of Lord 
Palmerston in Italy, he made no hesitation at flying in 
the face of England — and being unable to do anything 
more serious, he tormented by all manner of means 
Englishmen travelling in his dominions, put slights on 
our ambassador, refused to do the Queen the honour 



EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH. 9 

of sending an archduke to announce his accession, as 
he did to the Sovereigns of other great countries, and 
rudely declined to allow a deputation from his army 
to attend the funeral of Wellington ; and all this 
display of undoubted "pluck," as we call it in England, 
he has just crowned by turning against his quondam 
saviour and ally, the Czar, and by preparing to take an 
active part in drubbing him. Doubtless the violation 
of his solemn promise to give his people constitutional 
liberty is deserving of censure ; but impartiality requires 
the admission that it was very probable that this liberty 
would have loosened the bonds which bind the nume- 
rous and divergent provinces of the empire into one 
great whole, and that that was a result which a person 
in his position could hardly contemplate with patience. 
Even his stern cruelty may, perhaps, to a certain extent, 
be considered as not without some excuse, when it is 
called to mind that both the spirit of vengeance and 
the spirit of fear — vengeance on a revolt that nearly 
rent the empire asunder, fear that the revolt might be 
renewed — combined to make him think it necessary. 

In other respects our youthful Majesty is not unde- 
serving of admiration. He cares little for the pomp, 
and parade, and gewgaw splendour of the imperial 
state ; is remarkably simple in his personal tastes and 
dress ; is sparing of the pleasures of the table ; contents 



10 THE MEN OF THE WAB. 

himself with a couch as hard as was that of Wellington ; 
is an early riser ; and is passionately fond of hard 
work. Like other young men, he has not been indif- 
ferent to the charms of female beauty, but has never 
made devotion to the sex an excuse for vice. Without 
being a savant, he is remarkably well informed, and 
speaks several languages with fluency and grace. No 
roi faineant is he, and all the more important business 
of his government passes through his hands. He pays 
great attention to military matters; indeed, he is a 
thorough soldier, and loves the soldier's calling. He 
is never so happy as when passing reviews or inspecting 
barracks ; and it is no unusual thing for him to appear 
at the early morning parades when quite unexpected, 
and to rebuke, and even place under arrest, officers 
who may be guilty of the slightest neglect* In manner 
and bearing he affects soldierly bluffhess, and smokes 
cigars all day long like a trooper. All this makes him 
a great favourite in his army. Whether, however, he 
possesses the qualities of a general, he has thus far had 
no opportunity of showing ; but he possesses the true 
soldier's disregard of personal luxury, and the true 
soldier's bravery. Of his courage, indeed, he has given 
striking proofs. At the battles of Santa Lucia and 
Custozza he rushed headlong into danger ; and at the 
latter was so rashly brave that old Marshal Eadetzky 



EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH. 



11 



deemed it necessary to punish him by placing him under 
arrest for twelve hours. On another occasion he had 
arranged to go from Venice to Trieste in a small vessel. 
Just as he was about to set out, a violent tempest 
arose, and he was earnestly intreated to wait until it 
had subsided ; but remembering (it may be) that Caesar 
had bravely defied a storm when going from Apollonia 
to Brundusium, he put to sea, and, after a frightful 
voyage, arrived safe, though the vessel which accom- 
panied him was wrecked. What, however, will perhaps 
be considered one of the most pleasing traits in his 
character, at least by the fair sex, is that, regardless of 
the cold etiquette and colder reasons of state which 
generally accompany the marriages of Sovereigns, he 
fell head over ears in love with a young princess whom 
he met for the first time at a family party; flatly 
declared to the Archduchess his mother, " I will marry 
her, and nobody else ! " put an end at once to nego- 
tiations which he had opened for a marriage with 
another princess ; paid his suit to his fair charmer, and, 
being accepted, was in due time wedded to her. 

And now to conclude. Carefully weighing the good 
and bad points in the Emperor's character, we should 
say that, under present circumstances, he is admirably 
qualified for restoring the tottering empire of Austria 
to her former power and glory; but that he will never 



12 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

render his people contented and happy, and will 
always rule them with a rod of iron ; that it is by no 
means impossible that he may gain the admiration of 
Europe, but that he has not the slightest prospect of 
ever enjoying her esteem ; that, in a word, he may 
turn out to be one of those princes who are not with- 
out claims to be called great, or at least eminent, 
but whom it would be a cruel derision to designate 
as good, 

+ 

ii. 

PRINCE OF PRUSSIA. 

" Some men are born great," without being able to 
achieve the greatness their birth opens to them. Of 
this class is the Prince of Prussia. No grander or 
nobler career of usefulness, renown, or glory was ever 
chalked out for mortal man than that which presented 
itself to him. 

All the world knows that there are two things 
which the bulk of the great German people have 
long ardently desired — which the wisest statesmen 
of Germany think absolutely necessary — and which, 
according to all accounts, cannot long be withheld 
without producing sanguinary convulsions : those things 
are constitutional liberty, and some sort of unity which 



PRINCE OF PRUSSIA. 13 

shall make Germany, not a thing of shreds and patches, 
but a great whole — a living nation. All the world 
knows, too, that under pain of seeing the country fall 
under the atrocious domination of presumptuous dema- 
gogues, and social reformers, fiercer, viler, and more 
lunatic than those of France — it is absolutely indis- 
pensable that Prussia, as the largest and most intelligent 
of the German nations, should take the lead in, and 
% be the instrument by which the transformation of the 
political constitution of Germany should be accom- 
plished ; and moderate, well-defined liberty — as nearly 
as possible like that which we enjoy in England — be 
gradually established. It consequently follows that it is 
the bounden and sacred duty of the illustrious family 
whom God has placed at the head of the Prussian 
people to labour incessantly by all peaceable and lawful 
means to work out these great ends. And of all the 
royal family, the one who should take the most active 
part therein is the prince who stands nearest the 
throne ; for he enjoys all the eclat of royalty without 
the inconveniences, and is therefore admirably fitted to 
be the leader of a national movement ; and he possesses 
much of the real power of sovereignty without its 
responsibility, and is therefore free to act according to 
circumstances. 

But this " great mission," as it would be called on the 



14 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

Continent, the Prince has never understood. Although 
he is old enough to remember the noble uprising of the 
German people to drive Napoleon and his armies from 
their territory — an uprising caused mainly by the solemn 
promise of the reigning kings and princes to grant 
constitutions the moment the invader should be ex- 
pelled ; and although all the subsequent history of 
Prussia clearly shows that the tendency of events was 
such as imperatively to require the establishment of a » 
constitution for the preservation of domestic quiet, and 
the extension of Prussian influence in Germany, he was 
an implacable absolutist : the sword — the sword — he 
could conceive no other system of government ; and 
the very idea of allowing the nobles of Prussia and 
the commons of Prussia to have, by their represen- 
tatives, some voice in public affairs, almost drove him 
mad. The King his brother, who, in spite of his silly 
crotchets and his wretched indecision, is not without 
political sagacity, saw in 1847 that the time had arrived 
at which liberal concessions of some kind could no 
longer be withheld with safety to the throne ; but 
though what he proposed was little enough in all con- 
science, the Prince vehemently opposed it, and many 
angry scenes took place between him and his brother 
in consequence. The revolutionary tempest of 1848, 
-which, beginning in France, soon swept over Germany, 



PRINCE OF PRUSSIA. 15 

would, one would have thought, have opened his eyes 
to what the people wanted, and what they were deter- 
mined to have ; but all the counsel that he could give 
was, Besist — shoot them down — dragoon them. Besist-- 
ance, though less sanguinary than he had advised, was 
made ; and the consequence was, at Berlin, that they 
rose against the royal troops, filled the streets with 
barricades, almost besieged the King in his palace, and 
— triumphed ! At that moment, the throne of Prussia 
had nearly been demolished for ever ; but the insurgents 
spared it : though, in the insolence of their victory, 
they made the King come forth from his palace, and 
stand bareheaded as their dead and wounded were 
borne proudly past. The result of the rising was, that 
the King had to promise a constitution, to convoke a 
Constituent Assembly — to submit, in a word, to all 
that the victorious people thought fit to impose. Thus, 
then, the line of policy which the Prince had always 
advocated, ended for his family and himself in disaster 
and disgrace. 

In connexion with the disturbances at Berlin, the 
Prince was accused of having given orders to the 
soldiery in the palace to fire on the people, whereby a 
fearful sacrifice of human life was occasioned. This 
charge subjected him to great obloquy ; so much so, that 
it became unsafe for him to remain in the capital, or 



16 THE MEN OP THE WAR. 

even the country. (It may be said, par parenthese, that 
the partizans of the Prince have since made great efforts 
to prove that this odious accusation was unfounded : 
they may be right, but it still clings to him as a 
"damning spot" in his reputation.) He accordingly, 
without drum or trumpet, without even saying, " My 
native land, good night!" came to seek refuge in 
England, and was hospitably received by the Queen. 
When he was missed, great curiosity was manifested to 
know what had become of him, and the Ministers 
were questioned in the Assembly about him. " Oh ! " 
said they, "he has gone to England to study the 
constitution ! " This drew forth shouts of laughter, and 
the fun it created out of doors was great indeed. But 
it afterwards turned out to be quite true — the Prince 
did occupy his leisure in this country in constitutional 
studies. He yawned over Blackstone, skimmed through 
Delolme, went to the Museum to look at Magna 
Charta, and bought a copy of the Bill of Bights ; and, 
besides, he had many long confabulations with Prince 
Albert as to the art and mystery, the advantages and 
disadvantages, of the constitutional system of govern- 
ment. What could man do more? The result was 
that his eyes became opened to the fact that a consti- 
tution, after all, is not such a very fearful thing, and 
that, at all events, it was infinitely preferable for the 



PRINCE OF PRUSSIA. 17 

Hohenzollerns to remain in possession of the throne of 
Prussia with a constitution, than, by refusing one, to 
run the risk of being ejected and exiled. 

No sooner had this new light dawned on his princely 
mind than he hastened to cause his conversion to be 
made known from one end of Prussia to the other. 
" The Prince a constitutionalist !" cried the good peo- 
ple. " Thank heaven ! It will save his house, himself, 
and us from many calamities ?' To enable him to 
prove the sincerity of his new convictions, they elected 

i him a member of the Constituent Assembly for the 
small town of Wirsitz. Great was the curiosity to see 
him make his debut as an M.P., and no wonder ; for it 

i was to decide the question whether or not the Prussian 
nation could with confidence look up to him, the heir 
of the throne, if not as the champion of what they 
conceived their rights, at least as one who would faith- 
fully respect the liberties they might gain. Alas ! the 
expectations they had formed were disappointed. In 
the first place, the Prince shocked them and their 
representatives by going to the Chamber in grand mili- 
tary uniform, with a huge sword clanking by his side, 
as if, like another Cromwell or Bonaparte, he were 
about to drive the members away, instead of taking 
part in the deliberations as one of their body. He, 
however, took the usual oaths plainly and simply, and 
2 

I 



18 THE ME ST OF THE WAR. 

then lie requested to be allowed to speak. K Silence for 
the honourable member for Wirsitz V cried the Presi- 
dent. Profound was the stillness which immediately 
prevailed — earnest the attention given to the royal 
speaker. He said, in a loud voice, and with great 
apparent frankness, that he was grateful for the confi- 
dence that had been placed in him by his election, and 
that, as the constitutional system of government had 
been decreed by the King, he pledged himself to support 
it honestly* " Such/' he added, " is the duty of every 
true patriot, and it is especially mine as the first sub- 
ject of his Majesty " Had he stopped there, he would 
have been greeted with enthusiasm ; he would have 
become the most popular man in all Prussia ; but, after 
some insignificant observations, he said that he could 
not return to his place without adding that he was 
" with God for the King and country." $Tow, this 
phrase, though so apparently harmless in itself, and 
though, in fact, seeming to be, so to speak, a natural 
conclusion to his constitutional declaration, had the 
misfortune to be the motto or " cry," as Mr. Tadpole 
would call it, of the ultra-retrograde party. It was 
consequently considered as perfectly neutralising what 
he had just said ; and he was unanimously set down as 
a sort of political Caliban, with a " forward voice " to 
speak well, and a " backward voice M to speak ill. He 



PRINCE OF PRUSSIA. 19 

returned to his seat utterly ruined as a political 
character, the Constitutionalists distrusting him on the 
one hand, the Absolutists repudiating him on the other. 
What other man would have so recklessly thrown away 
such a glorious opportunity of serving his country, 
gaining the people's love, making his name immortal, 
and consolidating the power and the glory of his royal 
house ? 

Disgusted with the position he had thus created for 
himself, he soon threw up his seat in the Assembly, 
abandoned all meddling with politics, and occupied 
himself with new ardour in his military duties, to which 
he has always been passionately attached. After a 
while he was intrusted with the command of the Prus- 
sian troops sent to put down the revolutionists of 
Baden ; and it is but fair to say that he acted with 
energy and courage, tempered, however, with humanity. 
Then he became Military Governor of the Ehenish 
Provinces, and passed some years in the discharge of 
the comparatively humble duties of that post. In the 
execution of them he displayed some tact, and contrived 
to make himself liked by all who had occasion to ap- 
proach him. 

The Eastern question opened to him a new chance 
of achieving that greatness which he so piteously failed 
to secure as a politician. From the very first he made 



20 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

no secret of his sympathies for the cause supported by 
England and France ; and he expostulated — sometimes 
affectionately, sometimes angrily — with his royal brother 
on the Russian tendencies of his Government. No 
sooner did this become known than a revulsion of 
popular feeling took place with respect to him. Instead 
of being regarded with distrust and dislike, he became 
a universal favourite : instead of being pointed at as a 
would-be absolutist, he became the champion of the 
popular cause. The people proclaimed him a veritable 
descendant of the Great Frederick — a good Prussian 
patriot — a true-hearted German : and they encouraged 
him by all the means in their power to rescue the 
Prussian crown and nation from the deep disgrace of 
being associated with that enemy of humanity, the 
Czar. It really seemed that this time the nation had 
not misplaced its confidence; for the Prince not only 
protested more vehemently against the base and 
cowardly cringing to Russia of the King and Manteuffel, 
but, finding what he said disregarded, he threw up all 
his military commands, quitted Berlin in wrath, vowed 
that he would have no further communication with his 
brother, and contemplated leaving the country alto- 
gether. This was noble — right noble; and it would 
have redeemed all the past, even had the past been 
worse than it was. But well is it written, " Put not 



PRINCE OF PRUSSIA. 21 

your trust in princes/' Only a few weeks flew away, 
and lo ! he allowed himself to be cajoled into returning 
to court, resuming his military functions, and dropping 
his open hostility to the Government. Have the King 
and his Ministers changed their policy ? In no respect: 
they are as Russian as ever. Are the Prussian armies 
about to do their duty to Europe by lending their aid 
to crush the Czar? There is nothing to indicate it* 
Why, then, has the Prince become changed all at once 
from a patriotic lion to a cringing lamb ? Truly wo 
cannot tell ; unless it be that he is one of those unfor- 
tunate men who, from some sad fatality, or from lack 
of capacity, or from both, cannot distinguish themselves 
honourably, when distinction, as it were, presents itself 
to them — who are only born great to gratify plebeian 
malignity by showing how little the great can be ! 

The Prince of Prussia is as tall as a life-guardsman; 
and his bearing is martial, imposing, and dignified. 
The expression of his features is calm and kindly. In 
speaking, he affects soldierly bluffhess, and often in- 
dulges the miserable conceit — rather in favour amongst 
German princes — of constructing his phrases in a 
different manner to that which grammar and common 
sense require. In his domestic relations he is exemplary, 
and his attention to religious duties is becoming; 
though he has great contempt for the cant of the 



22 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

Pietists, or Methodists, which his royal brother thinks 
true godliness. He has the reputation of being a 
good soldier; but we are assured that his military 
excellence is rather that of a corporal than a general. 
From what has been said of him, and from the manner 
in which he has acted on the two great occasions of his 
life, the sagacious reader will not require telling that 
he is not the wisest of mankind, and that (to use a 
French expression) it was not he who invented gun- 
powder. But his intellectual deficiencies would not be 
remarked if he would act with that straightforward 
honesty and decision which he is anxious to be thought 
to possess, and especially if he would allow himself to 
be guided in all serious affairs by the Princess his 
wife, who is one of the most intelligent and politically- 
sagacious women of these days. Of this distinguished 
lady we shall have occasion to speak on a future 
occasion ; and for the present we conclude by saying, 
" O Prince ! if you would make Prussia great, and 
your name glorious, follow her counsels ! " 



PRINCE PASKIEWITSCH. 

The extent to which falsehood is carried in Eussia 
almost exceeds belief. The history not only of past, 
but contemporary events, is audaciously falsified ; the 
published accounts of the state of her armies and 
finances, her agricultural and manufacturing produc- 
tions, and even of the numbers of her population, are 
falsified ; her state papers teem with falsehood ; her 
functionaries and people cannot open their lips to a 
stranger without saying the thing which is not; her 
pretended civilisation is a falsity; her imposing Em- 
peror himself, who in Eussian eyes is a magnificent 
personification of the nation, is a living lie. But what, 
perhaps, most strongly shows the irresistible propensity 
to falsehood of the Russians, and the astounding bold- 
ness with which they indulge it, is, that on the order 
or the wish of the Emperor they will imperturbably 
admit and proclaim as an undoubted fact that a man 
bears a different name to that which is really his — 
belongs to a family with which he may have no earthly 
connexion, and of which it may be he never heard — was 
never married, though he has a lawful wife — is father- 
less, with a large family, or is the parent of children 



24 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

whom he never begot or knew — or, to crown all, is 
dead, though actually alive. Such things seem incredible, 
but they are of frequent occurrence. For proof of this, 
the reader may be reminded that Catherine I., first the 
mistress and then the wife of Peter the Great, figures 
in Russian-written history, and is regarded by all good 
Russians, as the daughter of a Polish noble, and niece 
of an elected King of Poland ; whereas it is perfectly 
notorious that she was the illegitimate offspring of a 
poor peasant woman — was a common serving-wench, 
then became the wife of a drunken Swedish trooper, 
and then fell to a degraded position, which regard for 
propriety renders it difficult to designate. Another 
instance of the like kind is related in a book about 
St. Petersburgh by an eminent French traveller. A 
member of the illustrious house of Montmorency, whilst 
walking some years ago in the streets of that city, was 
astonished at seeing the arms of his own family, cut out 
in stone, figuring above the principal entrance of a fine 
mansion. He asked whose arms they were, and was 
told that they were those of the Count de Laval. " De 
Laval !" cried he : " why, that is the name of a branch 
of my own family; and yet I never heard of any 
member of it having settled in this country !" "Ah !" 
said his companion, " you don't know how things are 
managed here ! But listen. Towards the end of the 



PRINCE PASKIEWITSCH. 25 

last century, a French adventurer, a hairdresser by 
trade, contrived to make a damsel of large fortune, be- 
longing to one of the first families, fall ardently in love 
with him. Her parents would, naturally, on no account 
hear of her marriage with the lowly-born trader. 
Thereupon she, like a heroine of romance, went to the 
mad Emperor Paul, father of Nicholas, and, throwing 
herself on her knees, told her tale, and besought his 
intervention. The maniac happened to be in a jovial 
mood ; and so, instead of having her scourged, or 
exiled to Siberia, he said, chuckling, 'And so your 
father objects to the young man because he is not 
noble, eh ? But I'll ennoble him ! There V So saying, 
he thrust into her hands a ukase by which the French- 
man was declared to be 6 His Excellency the Count de 
Laval, of the house of Montmorency, in France ! ' On 
this, the girl's parents dared make no further objection. 
The artiste en cheveux, accordingly, married the damsel, 
boldly assumed the name and arms of Laval, remained 
Count de Laval to the end of his days, and was suc- 
ceeded in the title by his son ! " 

These grotesque instances of Kussian contempt of 
truth always occur to our mind when we read a Russian 
biography of, or hear Russians talk about, Prince 
Paskiewitsch. It is the good will and pleasure of 
Czar Nicholas that the Prince shall be considered as a 



26 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

noble by birth ; and therefore Russian writers and 
talkers maintain vehemently that he is descended from, 
and the chief of, " a noble family winch, for three hun- 
dred years, has been settled in Little Bussia." It is 
also the Czar's pleasure that he shall be held to be a 
Bussian, not only by birth, but by the uninterrupted 
descent of the three hundred years aforesaid ; and 
therefore the Czars subjects, great and small, vow that 
none is more Bussian than he. But what are the facts ? 
Why, that Prince Paskiewitseh has had a family in- 
vented for liim, as one was invented for Catherine, and 
another for the French barber. He is the son of a 
Pole named Paskes, of a small town of the province of 
Lithuania — which Paskes never took any part whatever 
in the Dietines or provincial assemblies of nobles, and 
therefore had no claim to be considered a noble ; 
consequently, the Prince is not noble by birth. In the 
second j>lace, as the son of a Pole, he is, to all intents 
and purposes, not a Bussian, but a Pole ; and not only 
is he a Pole by Ins fathers nationality, but he is one by 
his mother's also, for she was a Polish woman — and by 
the place of his birth likewise, for it was beyond all 
doubt the dirty village of Mohilew, in Lithuania. 

When we find a man who has risen to greatness 
guilty of the baseness of misrepresenting Ins origin, or, 
what is the same thing, allowing it to be misrepresented 



PRINCE PASKIEWITSCH. 27 

for him, we may be certain that his career, to whatever 
pinnacle of success it may have raised him, or however 
brilliant it may appear, has not been altogether pure 
and creditable. To this truth w r e boldly declare that 
Prince Paskiewitsch, in spite of his exalted rank and 
his European renown, is no exception ; and we base the 
declaration on facts obtained from an authentic source, 
and which are well known in the higher circles of 
St. Petersburgh, though nobody dare talk about them 
there. 

Gifted by nature with a calm and calculating mind, 
Paskes had no sooner emerged from boyhood than lie 
perceived that his mangled and down-trodden country 
presented no opening for ambition ; and he was ambi- 
tious. What did he do, therefore ? Immediately 
resolved to range himself on the side of the conquerors. 
Procuring letters of recommendation, he hurried oil to 
St. Petersburgh, and demanded admission to the army. 
As it was an object to make sure of as many Poles as 
possible, as it was represented that the youth had 
brains, and as, above all, some influential personage 
said a word in his favour, a commission was given to 
him. He determined thenceforth to be a thorough 
Pussian, and attached the Eussian ivitsch to his name. 
" Astonishing sagacity ! wonderful decision for one so 
young!" say his admirers. But was there no disgrace 



28 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

in such an abandonment of his unfortunate country ? 
no shame in accepting wages from her oppressors and 
spoliators ? Great as were the faults of Poland — almost 
merited as was her fate — there is something so impious 
and so atrocious in treason to one's native land that 
no honest man, not a Russian, will, we are assured, even 
attempt to excuse Paske's conduct. In his own family, 
and amongst their friends in Poland, it created a cry 
of horror ; and there is reason to believe that it broke 
his mothers heart — inost certainly it sent her with 
sorrow to the grave. 

Once in the army, his promotion was rapid. "A 
proof of talent !" say his flatterers. But what says fact ? 
Why, that it was procured by something very like moral 
infamy. A friend of his, it seems, revealed to liim that 
a formidable conspiracy .was in progress, and that he 
was engaged in it. Without regard to the solemn 
promise of secrecy he had given, without consideration 
for the fate of the friend, Paskiewitsch (for so we must 
call him, since so he calls himself) denounced the plot 
to the authorities. The conspirators were arrested, and 
were one and all — the friend amongst them ! — sent to 
work in the mines of Siberia for life. Many years 
have passed since then, but this foul act has never been 
effaced from the memory of the Prince's countrymen, 
and it probably never will. It was, however, to a 



PRINCE PASKIEWITSCH. 29 

certain extent, avenged. One day, after the Revolution 
of '31, when the Prince was walking in the streets of 
Warsaw in all the pride of his Yiceroyalty, an old man 
approached him and spat in his face: " Paskes ! ">said 
he, " thou betrayedst my brother ; take that ! " 

That, however, the Prince did his duty as a brave 
and a good soldier, it would be unjust to deny ; neither 
can it be disputed that on some occasions he distin- 
guished himself greatly. From 1805 to 1812 he was 
almost constantly in active service, either against the 
French or the Turks ; and at the fearful battle of 
Smolensk he performed prodigies of bravery — had two 
horses killed under him, and took a French general 
prisoner with his own hand. Promoted to the rank of 
general, and intrusted with a command in the army 
sent to follow the French in their retreat, he fought like 
a Hon ; and his impetuous personal bravery and skilful 
manoeuvring at Culm, Leindicht, Denau, Dresden, and 
Leipsic materially influenced the fortune of the day. 
After this he had the honour of being in the command 
of the advanced guard of the Russian portion of the 
allied armies which chased Napoleon into France, and 
followed him there. In assailing the great warrior in 
his last desperate stand, in which he displayed the 
immense resources of his genius, Paskiewitsch played 
no unimportant part ; at Arcis-sur-Aube, in particular, 



30 THE MEN OP THE WAR. 

be was pitted against Napoleon in person, and the 
result was not such as to make him ashamed ; and he 
figured with honour in the combats of Romainville, 
Belleville, and Menelmontant, which preceded the 
capitulation of Paris. All this is undoubtedly creditable 
enough. But what does it amount to ? Simply to 
showing that Paskiewitsch was a brave, dashing, and, 
above all, a lucky officer. Of such men, however, every 
war produces hundreds ; and even in the ranks of the 
Russians themselves there must have been a score as 
good as he. 

" But look at what he did as general commanding 
in chief !" cry the Russians. " Persia conquered, Tur- 
key conquered, Poland conquered, and Hungary con- 
quered ! Surely the man who thus vanquished must be 
a great general!" Let us see. In Persia, where he 
gained for his Emperor two provinces, Erivan and 
Xakhitchevan, and a money payment of upwards of 
3,000,000?. sterling, he had to fight an army which, 
deducting bandits, and vagabonds, and the refuse of 
the country who had been scraped together haphazard, 
was numerically inferior to his own ; which was in 
great part armed with bows and arrows or clubs, or 
not armed at all ; which had scarcely any artillery, and 
did not know how to use what it had ; which knew 
nothing of European tactics; which had no tolerable 



PRINCE PASKIEWITSCII. 31 

generals ; and of which several of the chiefs had been 
bribed to run away at a given moment. Evidently, it 
required no conjuror to rout such an assemblage as 
this, with a mighty army disciplined on the European 
system, and with all the tremendous u means and 
appliances" of European warfare : the Lord Mayor's 
sword-bearer himself could have done it. In Turkey, 
it is true, the Prince captured Kars and Akhaltzik, and 
fought well at Kauli and Milli Douze, and Erzeroum ; 
but competent military authorities declare that his plans 
reveal anything but strategetic genius, and that in fact 
they would have entailed overwhelming defeat on him 
if the Turks had not been at a vast disadvantage as 
regards numbers, and if their Pachas and commanders 
had not been bribed. The taking of Warsaw, which 
is his greatest exploit, dwindles, when examined, into 
little indeed, in a military point of view. It is true 
that the Poles are brave soldiers, and that they fought 
with desperate heroism ; but he had 120,000 men, and 
they 35,000; he 386 guns, and they only 136 ; whilst 
their army was split into hostile factions, no two ot 
their generals could agree, and they fought on no 
regular plan. Still, with all their disadvantages, it is 
declared by experienced generals that they might easily 
have routed him by merely taking advantage of his 
strategetic blunders. Of his conquest of Hungary tho 



32 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

less said the better for him. It is known to everybody 
that if the infamous Gorgey had not been purchased 
by Eussian gold, he could have surrounded his corps 
d'armee in its first entrance into the Hungarian terri- 
tory, and could have cut it entirely to pieces. It is 
known too, that he would, in all probability, never 
have gained a single victory if there had not been 
treason in his adversary's camp. But the Prince has 
given a striking proof that he himself has too much 
modesty to think himself the great general his admirers 
represent. It was with the most extreme reluctance 
that he consented to accept the command of the Eussian 
forces on the Danube — so much did the thought of 
measuring himself with European troops, and with such 
generals as Omar Pacha, Eaglan, and St. Arnaud, 
terrify him. There is every reason to believe that he 
expressly contrived to get himself wounded, in order to 
have a decent pretext for throwing up his command. 

Turning to his diplomatic and governmental career, 
we shall find, on an impartial examination, that it by 
no means deserves the enthusiastic eulogiums which 
slavish Eussians, to please the Czar, pass on it. That 
he possesses a certain degree of diplomatic skill can no 
more be denied than that he possesses a certain degree 
of military merit ; but assuredly it is nothing to boast 
of in a country noted for cunning and far-seeing 



PRINCE PASKIEWITSCH. 33 

diplomatists. The negotiations in which he was con- 
cerned in the early part of his career in Turkey all 
failed, though he made a free use of gold, and lied with 
even more than Eussian impudence. Talking of fib- 
bing — it is a singular trait of the national character, 
that his most admired diplomatic feat at this time was 
his obtaining some important concessions from a Pacha 
by pledging his solemn word of honour to the truth 
of a thing which he knew to be false ! His negotiations 
with Persia after she was defeated required no intelli- 
gence to conduct : he had only to state what his 
Government wanted, and Persia, being defeated, had 
no alternative but to accept it. With respect to his 
government of Poland, it may be very fine in the eyes 
of Eussian slaves, but it appears horrible to nous autres 
of Western Europe. It began by wholesale slaughter — 
was continued by the exiling to the mines of Siberia — 
that is, to a lingering, and slow, and fearful death — of 
thousands of stout-hearted men and helpless women ; 
and by dragging children of tender years from their 
parents to be brought up among strangers far away 
in the wilds of Eussia, lest, perchance, they should 
learn to love their native land ; and was consolidated 
by oppression so atrocious as to make the blood curdle. 
During the many years it has lasted, it has not given 
the bulk of the people a single material or moral 
3 



34 THE MEN OF THE WAR, 

amelioration ; it has not done a single thing to lessen 
the awful tyranny which grinds them to the earth, and 
makes them more abject than Eussian serfs. When 
it shall be brought to a close, the lines which Byron 
addressed to Poland may be applied to the woe-stricken 
nation : — 

* He left thee, as he found thee, still a waste, 
Forgetting all thy still-enduring claim — 
Thy lotted people and extinguished name — 
Thy sigh for freedom — thy long-flowing tear!" 

Such is the prestige which the Prince possesses 
amongst the Russians — a prestige owing almost entirely 
to the high favour with which he is regarded by the 
Czar — that, not content with admiring him as a general 
and a ruler, they admire him immensely in his private 
capacity as an individual. On this delicate subject, 
however, they are, in our opinion, as much mistaken as 
in the military and political appreciation of him. They 
state that he is a good husband and a good father. 
That may be ; but what virtues are more vulgar than 
the household ones ? We English are a nation of 
excellent husbands and fathers ! They forget, besides, 
that it is only since age began to creep on him that the 
Prince became edifyingly moral. In his early manhood 
he was such a licentious reprobate, that he was com- 
monly known by the nickname of Don Juan or Don 



PRINCE PASKIEWITSCH. 35 

Pacheco ; and his adventures with married women were 
more than once a subject of public scandal, carried 
dishonour into more than one family, and engaged him 
in several duels. His other personal qualities are not 
very great. All his life long he has been excessively 
vain of his person, and has made the adornment of it a 
subject of anxious solicitude ; and even now he is a 
battered old dandy. He can talk, when he pleases, as 
soft "blarney" as anybody; but there is no sincerity 
in it. As a parvenu, he is immensely proud of his 
dignity, and apes the grand seigneur with some skill ; 
but it is easy to see that he is only a parvenu after 
all, or, to speak more correctly, that he is a proof of the 
well-known fact that, beneath the thin varnish of 
civilisation which they have given themselves, the 
Eussians remain barbarians still. The luxury of his 
palaces is gorgeous ; but it partakes more of the bar- 
baric splendour of the East than of the elegant refine- 
ment of the West. He keeps a sumptuous table, and 
plays a valiant part at it ; for the wines of France, in 
particular, he has a great liking, and on clit that he has 
a decided weakness for brandy. He is very anxious to 
be considered a connoisseur of the fine arts, and has his 
saloons and galleries crammed full of pictures and 
statues ; but though he prates about the arts for an 
hour at a time, he has no real taste for them, and knows 



36 THE MEN" OF THE WAR. 

scarcely anything at all about them. So great, indeed, 
is his ignorance, that no man living has such a collec- 
tion of daubs and rubbish, or has given such fearful 
1 prices for them. He governs his domestics and depen- 
' dents with military severity ; at times, is most brutal 
towards them; and when they happen to offend him 
seriously, has them condemned by court-martial, and 
punished in military style. Yet, such are the strange 
contradictions of the human character, that, though he 
swaggers like Captain Bobadil in his household, he is 
in mortal fear of the tongue of his wife. This lady, 
who in her maiden days rejoiced in the harmonious 
name of Griboyedoff, is quite a Katherina; and such 
is the awe in which the poor man stands of her 
venomous loquacity, that he has never even in thought 
dared to be a Petruchio ! 

In speaking as we have done of the Marshal, we 
should be sorry to be suspected of a deliberate attempt 
to tarnish his glory as a brave old soldier, or diminish 
his fame as a distinguished man. But what is said is, 
to the best of our belief, the truth, and nothing but the 
truth ; and that is what it would be wrong to withhold. 
We have carefully weighed every assertion we have 
made, and could, did space permit, produce proofs of 
the correctness of every one. The fact is that Prince 
Paskiewitsch is part and parcel of the Russian system 



PRINCE PASKIEWITSCH. 37 

of government, and he is nothing more. As the Czar, 
in order to frighten Western Europe, has always pre* 
tended to have larger armies, more formidable fleets, 
more prosperous finances than he really has, so has he 
considered it necessary for the same reason to pretend 
to possess a great general and a great hero ; and took 
Paskiewitsch because he happened to be as well quali- 
fied as any body else, and because he liked the man — 
an all-powerful reason for a despot. The choice has 
been a lucky thing for the Prince ; it has given him 
titles, honours, wealth, and power. But his situation 
is at present greatly to be pitied, and it would not be 
easy to point out any man, the Czar excepted, who 
looks so contemptible in the eyes of Europe ; for as 
the exciting war has dissipated the delusion that existed 
as to the mighty and irresistible power of Russia, as it 
has already stripped her armies of their prestige, 
covered her fleets with ridicule, exposed the bankruptcy 
of her treasury, and shown the Czar to be the very 
reverse of a gentleman, so it has caused a vehement 
suspicion to be universally entertained that the glory 
of Paskiewitsch is little more than smoke, and he him- 
self, to use an honest English word, not much better 
than a great humbug. 



33 



IV. 

GENEEAL BAEAGUAY D'HILLIEES. 

In the French revolutionary army which captured 
the good city of Mentz, in 1792, "was a dashing young 
sans culotte ; and in that city there resided a handsome 
and sentimental girl. The sans culotte saw the German 
girl, and was smitten by her gentle charms ; and the 
German damsel was not insensible to the good looks of 
the French soldier. So the soldier found means to 
talk to the girl, and the girl listened to the soldier ; and 
the result was that, though then* respective countries 
were at war, they fell head over ears in love with each 
other. No sooner, however, did the young lady's 
parents hear of the connexion she had formed than 
they were hugely indignant ; to love an enemy of the 
dear old German fatherland — one, too, of those hideous 
sans culottes, whose object it was to destroy religion ' 
and thrones, and to turn everything topsy-turvy, and 
to guillotine everybody not of their way of political 
tliinking — the idea was horrible ! But the brave soldier 
pooh-poohed the old folks, and finding them deter- 
mined in their opposition, " stole away their daughter," 
carried her to Paris, and married her. Of this marriage 
was born, in Sept., 1795, General Baraguay d'Hilliers. 



GENERAL BARAGUAY D'HILLIERS. 39 

When quite a child, little Baraguay determined to 
follow the calling of his father, who, by the way, wise 
in his generation, had cast off sans culottism, and had 
become a general and a courtier. At the age of twelve 
or thereabouts he donned the uniform ; and when not 
more than seventeen, figured in the terrible campaign 
of Eussia. By a miracle, he survived its numerous 
combats, and its almost incredible disasters ; but he 
had the misfortune to lose his father. In 1813 he was 
in all the engagements that took place in Germany, and 
at the battle of Leipsic he had the forefinger of his 
left hand shot away. This rendered it necessary for 
him to have his arm amputated at the elbow — a sad 
loss to one so young, but still glorious for a soldier. 
The loss procured him the Cross of the Legion of 
Honour from the Emperor Napoleon I., but prevented 
him from taking any further part in the subsequent 
campaigns, and from "assisting" at the battle of 
Waterloo. The peace left him only a captain ; and as 
the restored Bourbons were not at all favourable to 
any one who had served with affection, however 
modestly, under the " Ogre of Corsica," a captain he 
remained for several years — nothing worthy of note 
occurring during the whole time, except that he figured 
with credit in the war in Spain, commenced in 1823* 
Promoted to the rank of major, he was attached to one 



40 THE MEN OF THE WAR, 

of the regiments sent out under Marshal Bourmont to 
capture Algiers, and in that brilliant affair he did good 
service. The Revolution of 1830 commenced his for- 
tune. An ex-officer of Napoleon, son of one of not the 
least of Napoleon's generals, and one of the neglected 
of the Restoration, and besides having served creditably 
and being of good repute, he had strong claims for the 
favours of the new Government ; and the new Govern- 
ment, on its part, was not sorry to secure him. He 
soon got a colonelcy ; then he became sub-governor of 
the Military School of St. Cyr; then, after two or 
three years, governor of the same establishment ; and 
then, at about the same time, he was promoted to the 
rank of major-general. No man, perhaps, in all the 
French army was better fitted for the superintendence 
of the Military School; for to great severity, which 
was required to keep the pupils in order, he united a 
most perfect knowledge of the theory of military science. 
His rule over the institution was marked by the extra- 
ordinary energy with which he suppressed a republican 
conspiracy amongst the young men, got up by them at 
the instigation of some of the more noted perturbators 
of Louis Philippe's days. In 1841 he went to Algeria, 
and obtained some important commands. In them he 
did good service, and at Constantina, in particular, 
distinguished himself greatly. About 1844 he was 



GENERAL BARAGUAY D'HILLIERS. 41 

elevated to the grade of lieutenant-general, and was 
subsequently employed as Inspector-General of Infantry 
in France. Then he was appointed to the command 
of the 6th military division, the head-quarters of which 
were at Besancon. The Revolution of 1848 found him 
in that post ; and as he hastened to send in his adhe- 
sion to the new Government, it left him there. But 
he soon took occasion to prove that though it was 
possible for him as a royalist to accept a republic, he 
was not at all disposed to tolerate the scandalous and 
dangerous follies which the Bed and Socialist factions 
chose to consider republicanism. When the emissaries 
of these factions arrived in the ancient city with orders 
from Ledru Bollin, the Minister of the Interior, to 
" convert " it to demagoguism and Socialism, the 
general, encouraged by the population, took on himself 
to silence them. They protested, spluttered, and 
threatened, but he defied them ; and finding they were 
likely to be troublesome, went the length of having 
them ejected from the city sans ceremonie. In gratitude 
for this energetic act, the population of the city and 
the department subsequently elected him one of their 
representatives in the National Assembly ; and they 
again returned him to the Legislative Assembly. As 
a lawgiver, he wisely refrained from haranguing in the 
tribune, and did not attempt to cut a brilliant figure 



42 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

in committees; but, nevertheless, he was one of the 
most respected and most influential of the " great party 
of order/' as it was the fashion in those days to call 
all who hated the Republic. After a while, Louis 
Napoleon, then President of the Eepublic, selected him 
as Commander-in-Chief of the Erench Army of Occu- 
pation at Rome. His appointment caused dissatisfaction 
to the ultramontane faction, which was then very 
powerful, the reason being that they did not think he 
was a very good Papist at heart, and was therefore 
more likely to perform his duty simply as a French 
general, instead of, as they wished, serving the Pope by 
all manner of means, even, if necessary, to the injury 
of his own country. At Rome he thought it advisable 
to try to gain their favour ; and so he squatted on his 
knees before the Pope, and kissed his slipper ,- went 
often to mass, and did Ins best to avoid yawning ; 
bowed to the bones of saints and other sacred rubbish ; 
once went to confession, for the first time in his life, 
and poured forth a history of an awful budget of 
sins, accompanied, however, by protestations of fervid 
repentance ; and he feasted the cardinals and monsig- 
nors in grand style, and roared with laughter at their 
bad and not very delicate jokes. The brave soldier 
fondly flattered himself that he was duping the Papist 
gentry in grand style ; but they were far too cunmng 



GENERAL BARAGUAY D'HILLIERS. 43 

old birds to be caught by his chaff ; and so, though 
they spoke softly to him before his face, they plotted 
against him behind his back, and with such effect, too, 
that before long they got him removed. Some tinie 
after, Louis Napoleon made him Commander-in-Chief 
of the Army of Paris. His acceptance of this office, 
combined with his recent mission to Rome, and the 
friendly footing on which he allowed it to be seen 
that he stood with the Prince, caused it to be suspected 
that he had consented to become Louis Napoleon's 
instrument in effecting the coup d'etat which had long 
been contemplated, and which circumstances seemed to 
render inevitable. But it turned out in the course of a 
few months that this suspicion was unjust ; he would 
have nothing to do with the proposed attack on the 
Assembly, and on the existing form of government, 
and he resigned his post. When the coup d'etat was 
struck he remained quiet, and took no part in the 
events that followed; but when Louis Napoleon had 
clearly gained the victory, the general consented to join 
him, and he became one of his senators, with a salary 
of 1,200?. a-year and nothing to do. He was not again 
called prominently before the public until November 
last, when he was appointed Ambassador to Constan- 
tinople, with the difficult mission of treating the Eastern 
question. After a few months' stay in that city he was 



44 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

recalled, and somewhat suddenly. As a compensation 
for this, he was named to the chief command of the 
Baltic army, which recently set sail for its destination 
in English ships of war. 

Such is an outline of the military, political, and 
diplomatic career of General Baraguay d'HiUiers. An 
impartial examination of that career, will, we think, be 
necessarily somewhat in this style : — 

The general is, most undoubtedly, an admirable 
soldier. Not only is he one of those of whom it is 
written 

" castra juvant et lituo tuba3 

Permixtus sonitus, bellaque matribus 
Detestata — " 

but he is deeply learned in the whole art and mystery 
of war. Nor is he without that which is indispensable 
to a commander — practical experience. To say that 
he is personally brave, brave as a lion, is unnecessary : 
all French generals are. Half a German, however, he 
possesses the Saxon qualities of coolness and deliber- 

■ ation which distinguish our countrymen in the field; 

• but they will not, we may be sure, prevent, on occasion, 
that dashing impetuosity which is peculiarly Gallic, and 
which has more than once covered the French army 
with glory. We expect, then, that the general will 
distinguish himself greatly in the arduous service to 



GENERAL BARAGUAY D'HILLIERS. 45 

which he has been called ; and we think that we can 
promise, that, though he is not particularly well dis- 
posed towards our nation, the English will rejoice at 
his exploits as sincerely as his own countrymen. Even 
for what may be done in the East, part of the credit 
will be due to him ; for during his embassy at Constan- 
tinople he caused military surveys to be made, visited 
and planned measures of defence for different strategetic 
points, roused the lethargic Turks to action, gave them 
non-commissioned officers to drill their soldiers in 
French fashion, and took care to see that their maga- 
zines were stored with gunpowder, and their arsenals 
with ammunition, arms, and artillery. But as there is 
no medal without its reverse, so have the soldierly 
qualities of General Baraguay d'Hilliers their drawback. 
He is an awful disciplinarian, has not the slightest 
regard for his men except as machines for fighting, 
and therefore subjects them to fatiguing marches, to 
harassing duties, to the sacrifice of everything like 
comfort, and to murderous combats against large odds. 
He is, too, under the influence of the horrid vice of 
envy of all who are above or on a level with him; 
and is disposed to act harshly towards the officers, 
whatever their grade, under his command. One instance 
of his envy may be cited. In the terrible insurrection 
at Paris in June, 1848, General Cavaignac, who, as 




46 THE MEN OP THE WAR. 

Minister of War, was intrusted by the Assembly with 
the chief command of the troops, offered to place him 
at the head of a division; but though not only Paris 
but all France was in danger of falling into the hands 
of a ruthless multitude, thirsting for blood and pillage, 
refused to serve under Cavaignac, because, forsooth, 
that general was of inferior standing to his, and had at 
one period been Ins subordinate. This refusal caused 
a most unfavourable impression at the time, and we 
must be permitted to think that it remains a stain on 
his reputation both as soldier and citizen. 

As a politician, it would be gross flattery to say that 
he possesses claims to public admiration ; and probably 
he himself would laugh at anybody foolish enough to 
attempt to find him any. His politics consist simply 
in supporting and serving that government, whatever 
its form, which will support and serve him. Thus he 
was an Imperialist under the Empire ; a Royalist under 
the Restoration ; a Philippist under Philippe ; a Re- 
publican under the Republic ; and he is a Bonapartist 
under the present regime : nor is there any reason to 
doubt that if another revolution should come, he would 
not (be it what it might) long be on the losing side. 
It is true that he refused to join in the coup cVetat, 
but he did so, not from conscientious scruples, but 
from the belief (entertained by most of the wise men 



GENERAL BARAGUAY d'hILLIERS. 47 

of the day) that it could not possibly succeed. The 
moment its triumph was beyond all question he declared 
himself in favour of it. 

Of all the men who, from the creation of diplomacy 
to the present time, have acted as diplomatists, the 
gallant general must, we fear, be set down as one of 
the very worst. He is, as Mr. Macaulay said of my 
Lord Grey, one of the most petulant and factious of 
mankind ; and at the same time, he is one of the most 
obstinate and overbearing. With such infirmities of 
temperament, he could not possibly, if he had tried, 
have displayed the courtesy and suppleness which form 
part of the diplomatic qualities ; and he did not try. 
To be just, he himself was aware of his unsuitableness 
for diplomacy ; for when the Emperor offered to send 
him to Constantinople, he exclaimed, " To go as Am- 
bassador ! Why, that is not mon affaire ; but if you 
could give me some hard fighting to do, I should be 
content/' "Bah I" answered the Emperor. " General 
Sebastiani once went as an Ambassador to Constan- 
tinople in the time of my uncle, but when there he 
found it necessary to fight. Who knows that the same 
thing will not happen to you, and that you will come 
back with a marshal's baton?" This decided the 
general; but he soon found himself as much out of his 
element as the stags of Tityrus when they grazed in 



48 



THE MEN OF THE WAR. 



cethere. First of all, he found that he possessed not 
the capacity or experience of the diplomatists and 
Ministers with whom he had to deal ; and the sense of 
his inferiority galled him. Then a multitude of 
circumstances combined to irritate him. The Sultan 
and the Turkish Ministers vexed him by not showing 
sufficient awe of him personally, and of the great 
country he represented ; and by refusing to obey some 
of his orders — he was not the man to request or recom- 
mend — and by displaying true Mussulman dilatoriness 
in the execution of the others. Lord Stratford de 
Redcliffe vexed him because he was possessed of far 
greater influence than he could ever hope to gain- 
influence arising from long residence, vast talents, and 
from the mighty power of the nation he personated. 
The corps diplomatique vexed him because they did not 
choose to admit the arrogant pretensions he put for- 
ward on behalf of France ; and the foreign circles of 
the capital vexed him because they did not accept as 
gospel all his patriotic vapouring about the superiority 
of France to all nations, her " mission " of civilisation, 
&c. &e. To exhale his spite, he indulged at times in 
vehement objurgations at the Porte, and made a rule 
of refusing to wait more than five minutes for Lord 
Stratford (who was always behind time) at his dinner- 
parties — remarking with a grim air and in solemn 



GENERAL BARAGUAY D'hILLIERS. 49 

tones, when the belated ambassador arrived, "My 
lord, the soup is cold ! " At length his exasperation 
rose to such a height that he determined to strike a 
grand coup against the Porte, and against the perfidious 
Milor : he all at once broke off diplomatic relations 
with the Porte, because, by the advice of Lord Strat- 
ford, it would not accord him a religious protectorship 
over the Greek Catholics — a precisely similar thing to 
which Kussia had demanded, and which England and 
France had instigated Turkey to refuse, arms in hand ! 
After this notable exploit, the French Government put 
an end to his mission ; and with it, no doubt, to his 
diplomatic career for ever. 

With all his bad temper, and all his moral imper- 
fections, the General is not devoid of high and generous 
and chivalrous qualities; but it is chiefly in private life 
that they are manifested. Our countrymen who will 
have to deal with him in the Baltic will therefore, 
we doubt not, find him a bon enfant in private, but a 
terribly mauvais coiicheur in public, and in all matters 
of military duty. Let us hope, however, that both 
they and the General will bear and forbear ; so that 
the mighty service in which they are engaged may 
result in the glory of England and France, and in the 
condign punishment of the Czar. 



4 



50 



v. 

KING OF GREECE. 

When, at the beginning of 1833, amidst the 
thundering of cannon and the acclamations of the 
people. Prince Otho of Bavaria landed in the fair realm 
of Greece, to wear its crown and sway its sceptre, it 
was confidently expected that, under his fostering care, 
the newly-resuscitated state would not, indeed, regain 
its ancient glory in arms, splendour in literature and 
art, and unquestioned pre-eminence in the other walks 
of intellectual greatness — that was impossible ; but at 
least develope its agricultural and commercial capabili- 
ties, and prove itself worthy of the political indepen- 
dence which the courage of its children and the 
generous intervention of the great Powers of Europe 
had secured for it. Twenty-one years have since 
flown away, and this expectation has vanished like mist 
before the morning sun. Greece is now in a situation 
scarcely one whit better than when she groaned under 
the tyranny of the Mussulman; her agriculture and 
commerce are nothing like what they ought to be ; she 
has no railways — -the great desideratum of a country 
in this century — and parts of her territory are even 
without ordinary roads ; brigandage stalks through her 



KING OF GREECE. 51 

provinces ; her court and statesmen, parliament and 
functionaries, are, with a few honourable exceptions, 
scandalously corrupt; her people are in distress, ill- 
governed, and discontented ; to crown all, she has lost 
the sympathies of Europe, which were formerly her 
tower of strength : in a word, she strikingly verifies 
the prophetic truth of Byron's lines, written years 
ago— 

" Greece ! change thy lords, thy state is still the same ; 
Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thy years of shame V 

And who is mainly responsible for this lamentable 
state of things ? The King. 

An honour which has fallen to the lot of few was 
reserved to him. He was made Sovereign, neither by 
the right of birth nor by right of conquest, but by the 
free election of the Greek people, sanctioned by the 
European Cabinets. And such was the affectionate 
confidence placed in him by the Greeks that they did 
not ask him for any constitutional guarantees. Grati- 
tude to people and Governments ; a lively sense of the 
great duties intrusted to him, which at his age (only 
eighteen) he could hardly have failed to entertain; 
pride at being called to the throne, not of an infant 
and unknown state far away in the wilds of America, 
but of a country in which Lycurgus and Solon had 
legislated, Pisistratus and Pericles ruled, Phocion been 



62 THE MEN OF THE WAB, 

a citizen — for which Alexander had gained glory, and 
Philopoemon died ; which, besides, had produced orators 
and poets, philosophers and architects, greater than the 
world had ever seen before, and as great as any it has 
seen since : these things, one would think, would have 
sufficed to cause the young monarch to enter on his 
task with modest joy, and to determine that, come 
what might, his manner of executing it should bring 
no discredit on his name, and no misfortune on his 
adopted nation. But Otho had neither the intellectual 
nor the moral qualities required for such a resolution. 
[Nature had given him but a poor intelligence, in which 
not all the industry of eminent German professors (the 
most painstaking of men) could implant such an extent 
of knowledge as would have been creditable for one 
of his exalted station ; and, consequently, the great 
and glorious history of Greece inspired him with no 
ambition. Nature had given him a cold heart, which 
nothing could warm ; and, therefore, the marvels 
of Grecian art and literature remained as indifferent to 
him under the sunny sky of Athens, as they had been 
when professors bored him about them in the murky 
atmosphere of Munich. He had all the pride, and 
arrogance, and pompous pretensions, and narrow- 
minded exclusiveness of the smaller German courts; 
and, consequently, was disposed to feel but little sym- 



KING OF GREECE. 53 

pathy for a people of democratic, frank, and uncere- 
monious manners. In spite of his pride, however, 
he had no decision of character ; and was unable 
to chalk out any line of policy on an emergency. Li 
spite of his moral weakness, he was frightfully ob- 
stinate; and, as is generally the case with obstinate 
men of small intellect, was liable to be obstinate about 
the wrong things, and at the wrong times. Then he 
was of a very indolent disposition, and not at all 
disposed to labour with energy for the regeneration 
of Greece. Last, but not least, he entertained a marked, 
aversion to the female sex ; and this sentiment was 
not likely to make him love a people who take great 
delight in gallantry. 

Instead, then, of beginning his reign well, he began 
it most shamefully. First of all, he entered the country 
at the head of several thousand Bavarian soldiers, and 
quartered them in it, not as if it had given itself to 
him, but as if he had conquered it ; and he allowed 
these soldiers to rob, insult, and oppress the unfortunate 
Greeks in the most infamous way. Next, he committed 
the egregious folly of making Athens the capital of the 
new kingdom, instead of Napoli, though the Greeks 
preferred Napoli ; not only on account of modern 
historical associations, but because it was a town already 
built and peopled, whereas Athens was only a heap of 



54 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

ruins ; and because it was superior to Athens in site, 
in salubrity, and in its natural and artificial defences 
against attack; and, in fact, in every respect. His 
royal father, however, King Luclwig of Bavaria, the 
quondam lover of the notorious Lola Montes, told him 
that Athens was classical, and that it was better to have 
a classical capital than a useful one ; and, like a good 
boy, he believed his papa. His next freak was to 
proceed to spend the public money with a recklessness 
which would have scarcely been justifiable if all the 
wealth of Peru and California had been his ; and, in 
addition to the revenues of Greece, a loan of 
2,500,000?. sterling, raised and guaranteed by the 
protecting Powers, went also. Nor was it for public 
undertakings at all useful to Greece that the money 
was thus disbursed. With the exception of a vast 
portion of it, wasted in the construction for himself of 
a marble palace on a gigantic scale, but which is so 
hideously ugly as to cry for vengeance on its author — 
it is more like a cotton manufactory, or a barrack, or 
a workhouse than a royal residence — with the excep- j 
tion of the money wasted in this abominable edifice, 
every halfpenny of the revenue, every halfpenny of 
the loan, every halfpenny that could be squeezed out 
of the Greeks, was sent by King Otho and his 
Bavarians into Bavaria. Moreover, all the best-paid 



KING- OF GREECE. 55 

offices were given to Bavarians, without any regard to 
their qualifications. A village schoolmaster was made 
president of one of the Faculties of Athens ; a copying 
clerk, chief of a department in the Foreign Office ; an 
adventurous hairdresser, a colonel ; and so on. And 
when there were no more places vacant, new ones 
were created. Thus a stolid Bavarian was allowed a 
large salary as Inspector of Woods and Waters at Syra 
— a scorched rock, where there is neither tree nor 
shrub, and where water costs a penny a glass ; another 
was appointed Gothic architect, and was allowed to 
spend all his time in Germany " studying " Gothic 
churches; in short, the most scandalous abuses, the 
most extravagant waste, was tolerated. 

As King Otho began, so he continued ; but this sort 
of regime, scarcely less hateful and disastrous to the 
Greeks than that of the Turks, could not be borne for 
ever. Their indignation, long smothered, broke forth 
with terrific violence in September, 1843. On that 
occasion, his Majesty was very near losing his crown ; 
but the Greeks contented themselves with subjecting 
him to some rather galling humiliations (one of the 
chiefs drew his sword on him, but sheathed it with an 
insulting expression), and with compelling him to expel 
all the Bavarian invaders, and to grant a constitution 
which considerably diminished his regal powers. But 



56 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

the King seemed determined to govern as badly as 
possible ; and, in spite of the constitution, he has suc- 
ceeded, as we said at the beginning of this article, in 
corrupting the Greeks, in ruining the finances, in 
preventing the development of agriculture and com- 
merce ; and, in short, in bringing the country to the 
very brink of ruin. And what, perhaps, shows his 
mischievous power even more strongly is, that he has 
contrived on several occasions to display the blackest 
ingratitude to France and England, and to embroil 
Greece with them. His scandalous conduct in the 
Eastern affair in particular, which is too well known to 
need recapitulation, has made him the scorn of Europe, 
and has subjected him to the humiliation of having 
his capital occupied by foreign soldiers, and all govern- 
mental power taken from him. 

His aversion to the female sex, mentioned above, 
made him very reluctant to marry ; but, as the founder 
of a dynasty, it was deemed absolutely indispensable 
that he should " take unto himself a wife." His royal 
father having, after much intreaty, gained his reluctant 
consent to do so, sought far and wide in Germany for a 
spouse for him. But as he is gawkily built, with a 
flat, stupid face, a sallow complexion, a lack-lustre eye, 
thick lips and woolly hair ; as he is extremely awkwark 
in his manner, and, in spite of his high rank, almost 



KlXa OF GREECE. 57 

as timid with strangers as a country bumpkin in a 
drawing-room ; as the Greek dress which he constantly 
wears makes him look very like what schoolboys call a 
guy; as his intellectual qualities are notoriously the 
reverse of brilliant, and his temper the opposite of 
good, the fair members of one princely house after 
another "respectfully declined" to accept his hand. 
At last a young princess of the reigning family of 
Oldenburg, impatient to be married, and dazzled by 
the prospect of a crown, let fall the remark, " I should 
like to be queen of Greece V On this hint the Bava- 
rian ambassador acted ; and in due time the Princess 
Amelia became the wife of Otho. 

The Queen is her royal husband's superior in every 
respect. She is very beautiful ; and has the finest set 
of teeth and the prettiest foot in the world. She is 
remarkably brilliant in conversation, and at times quite 
a wit. She is always gay and laughing, and is pas- 
sionately fond of dress and dissipation. Dancing, in 
particular, is her delight ; and, if she could find 
danseurs capable of bearing it, she would waltz from 
night till morning and morning till night. To music, 
also, she is extremely partial. When the heat of the 
weather renders dancing unpleasant, and the opera a 
bore, she takes pleasure in getting up pic-nic parties at 
Eleusis, in memory, it may be, of the Eleusinian 



58 THE MEN OF THE WAH. 

mysteries. But, with all her devotedness to amuse- 
ment, she is one of the busiest politicians in Europe ; 
she meddles with everything ; and it was she who 
incited her lord and master to declare for Russia in the 
Eastern Question — her reason for so doing being, that 
she fancied the Czar would re-establish the Greek 
Empire, and make her Empress at Byzantium. 

When the war is finished, we presume that England 
and France will deem it necessary to pay a little atten- 
tion to King Otho and his Queen. Considering how 
mischievous the illustrious couple have been; what a 
great deal of trouble, anxiety, and expense they have 
caused us ; how different they have made Greece to 
what she was destined to be ; considering, also, that the 
Queen's desires anent Constantinople have undergone 
no change, and that they may again, on some critical 
occasion, be productive of serious annoyance; consi- 
dering, too, that both their Majesties entertain very 
bitter hatred of England; and that her Majesty, in 
particular, permits her pretty lips to let fall all maimer 
of harsh things about the English, their government, 
and even their Queen — considering all this, we should 
not, for our part, be surprised if the two Western 
Powers were to take the determination of relieving 
them of their Grecian royalty, and inviting them to 
return to their native Germany. And as no child has 



r 



MARSHAL DB ST. ARNAUD. 59 

blessed their union, and as report says that they live 
anything but happily together, they can, when in the 
fatherland, separate — nis Majesty returning to Munich 
to drink the Bavarian beer which he loves so much — 
her Majesty going back to Oldenburgh to spend her 
days in embroidery and her nights in the waltz. 

^ 

VI. 

MARSHAL DE ST. ARNAUD. • 

In France, it is not only the Bourbons and the Bona- 
partes who experience the more striking vicissitudes of 
revolutions — now lording it in regal splendour in the 
Tuileries, and then cast into exile, or quitting poverty- 
stricken obscurity in a dismal London lodging-house 
to ascend, after a short interval, an imperial throne : 
for many men there are in that country who, after having 
attained what for subjects is the summit of human great- 
ness, are plunged into as profound obscurity as if they 
existed not, and even into pecuniary distress ; or who, 
born in a private station, are raised, in spite of many 
obstacles, to the foremost places in the realm. Of this 
last class is Marshal Leroy de Saint Arnaud, Commander- 
in-Chief of the French army in the East. 

To have predicted of this personage in his youth, 



60 THE MEN OF THE "STAR. 

or at any period of his mature manhood, previous to 
the Revolution of 1848, that he would one day be what 
he now is — a marshal, an ex-Minister, and a commander 
of the armies of the heir of Napoleon — would have 
seemed a gross absurdity, and might even have been 
considered a personal insult. For by family, birth, 
education, career, position, everything, he seemed 
bound by strong ties to other princes, and marked out 
for a totally different destination. 

He was born of parents noted for their devoted 
attachment to the elder Bourbons, and to the old Tory 
principles of which they were the personification. To 
have instilled into him their personal sentiments and 
political convictions would have seemed to them a 
bounden duty at any time, just as one of our own stout- 
hearted old Cavaliers would have trained up his son and 
heir to love his Church and his King ; but it so hap- 
pened that precisely when he reached the age at which 
he was capable of understanding something of political 
questions, there occurred what appeared to the good 
folk an almost miraculous confirmation of the truth of 
their principles. By the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon, 
who in their eyes was only a Corsican usurper, was 
hurled from the throne, and, as our Cavaliers used to 
sing/ 4 the King enjoyed his own again. 55 They there- 
fore made him a Tory, or, as the French say, Legiti- 



MARSHAL DE ST. ARNAUD. 61 

mist. Nor, a little later, when, like all young men in 
those stirring times, he had to choose his own political 
party, did he show any repugnance to that which they 
had selected for him. On the contrary, the whole 
bent of his mind was in favour of Legitimist principles ; 
and he not only cordially embraced them, but contrived 
to attract attention by the vehemence with which he 
expressed his opinions. In fact, he was so enthusiastic 
for the King and the King's cause, that it was pro- 
posed to him to serve his Majesty. He accepted, and 
with swelling pride donned the uniform of full private 
in Grammont's company of his Majesty's Bodyguard. 
For several years he continued to serve the King with 
undiminished zeal ; and then he for some reason retired 
into private life, after having risen to the grade of sub- 
lieutenant. 

As a private individual, he embarked in commerce- 
in, it is believed, the wine trade ; but he did not ob- 
tain a fortune. He subsequently tried his hand at 
other things, and even studied for the stage ; nay, it is 
alleged that he actually appeared as an actor at the 
Ambigu Comique Theatre (the Parisian Surrey), and 
gained some success ; but this detail has been denied, 
and, as some obscurity hangs over this period of his 
life, it must be left in doubt. Whatever, however, his 
avocations were after he ceased to trade in wine, it is 



62 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

quite certain that his Legitimist principles continued 
fervid as ever ; as it is on record that, in compliance 
with the fashion of the time, he fought several duels in 
defence of them. 

After the Eevolution of 1830, the third phase of his 
life commenced ; but it still kept him at a long distance 
from the Bonapartean cause. Seeing that by that 
revolution the elder Bourbons had for a long time, 
perhaps for ever, destroyed their chances of reigning 
in France, and feeling that neither duty to himself nor 
his country would allow him, at his age, to remain in 
sentimental inactivity out of regret for them, he declared 
himself in favour of Louis Philippe's government ; and 
having determined to devote himself in earnest to the 
military career, he was, on his demand, admitted to a 
marching regiment with the same grade as that which 
he had held on quitting the army. He was upwards 
of five years before he got promoted to a lieutenancy. 
On obtaining that grade, however, he was designated 
for active service in Algeria ; and this gave him what 
he had long coveted, an opportunity of showing the 
stuff he had in him. As this stuff was of the right sort 
for a soldier — calm, intrepid bravery, strict attention 
to duty, perfect knowledge of the scientific part of 
his profession, and affectionate care for the welfare of 
his men — he soon gained the notice of his superior; . His 



MARSHAL DE ST. ARNAUD. 63 

promotion then became rapid. In 1837 he was 
nominated captain; 1842, lieutenant-colonel; 1844, 
colonel ; 1847, major-general. In the course of this 
time he had scarcely any repose, and was engaged in 
innumerable combats. He distinguished himself on 
several occasions by fine traits of bravery and skill, and 
he received the cross of the Legion of Honour for 
them; but perhaps his most useful services were the 
organisation of what are called the Zouaves (the regi- 
ments which have excited the intense admiration of 
our officers in the East), and the capture of a danger- 
ous Arab chief, Bou Maza by name, who was second 
only to Abdel Kader in bravery, energy, and influence, 
and who for a lengthened period greatly harassed the 
French. Marshal Bugeaud, who was then the great 
authority in the French army, had noticed the brilliant 
military qualities of St. Arnaud at an early epoch of 
his Algerian career, and he took pleasure in doing jus- 
tice to them. "St. Arnaud," he used often to say, 
" is destined to rise high, and I am anxious to have it 
said that I helped him ! " 

Up to the Revolution of 1848, Major-General St. Ar- 
naud had been a partisan of Louis Philippe ; not, it is 
true, an ostensibly enthusiastic one, but one who might, 
it was thought, be counted on in an emergency. 
When, however, the Republic was proclaimed, he, like 



64 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

all the generals and officers of the army, and all the 
functionaries of every department and every degree, 
and all the judges, and all the bishops, made no scruple 
in casting off his allegiance to the King, and in accept- 
ing that of the Eepublic. It is suspected, indeed, that 
he even went so far as to give the Kepublican fellows 
some reason to suppose that they would find him a 
convenient instrument ; for they intrusted him with the 
command of a division of Algeria. 

The election of Louis Napoleon to the Presidency of 
the Eepublic drew forth no manifestation of satisfaction 
from the General — a proof that he was not a Bona- 
partist at heart. But, some time after, he attracted 
attention by a dashing expedition which he made in 
Kabylia; and Louis Napoleon, as his custom was, 
wrote down his name " in the tablets of his memory 
When the Prince, at a subsequent period, resolved, in 
his secret soul, on his coup-cVetat, but found that Bara- 
guay d'Hilliers, Changarnier, and one or two other 
generals of note, whose co-operation he sought, were 
too doubtful of the result to consent to join him, he 
sent his friend and aide-de-camp, Colonel Fleury, on a 
roving expedition, to ascertain what general or colonel 
would be most likely to serve his purpose, and on 
what conditions he was to be got. The Colonel, on his 
return, reported that, all things considered, St. Arnaud 



MARSHAL DE ST. ARNAUD. 65 

was likely to be the best man. The Prince himself had 
guessed as much, from what he had taken the pains to 
ascertain about him. Confidential communications were 
accordingly opened, and St. Arnaud became the 
Prince's man. 

If the reader should think that what is here related 
does not redound to the credit of the Marshal as a 
political character, he is prayed to remember, first, that 
after his abandonment of Legitimacy, M. de Saint 
Arnaud had no particular affection for any party more 
than for another, his metier of soldier in Africa keeping 
him altogether away from the arena of political strife ; 
secondly, that, as a French General, he was naturally 
most anxious to rise in the world by any fair means, 
and therefore thought himself entitled to make the best 
bargain he could ; thirdly, that he may really, from a 
careful examination of the state of the country, have 
entertained the conscientious conviction that Louis 
Napoleon was alone capable of rescuing France from the 
fearful dangers into which the revolution had plunged 
her, and that therefore it was his duty, as a good citizen 
and a good soldier, to aid him. 

Brilliant as the General's services had been, they 
were hardly of sufficient importance to warrant his 
elevation to the Ministry of War, which it was neces- 
sary for the success of the Prince's plans that he 
5 



66 THE MEN OP THE WAR. 

should hold. Accordingly, means were taken for 
enabling him to gain renown. The Kabyles had long 
been troublesome to the French ; and he was placed at 
the head of an army of 9000 men to reduce them to 
subjection. The mountainous country occupied by 
these tribes ; their desperate courage, and fierce hatred 
of the French infidels ; the want of roads in their 
territory ; the extreme difficulty of conveying stores 
and ammunition ; the scarcity of water ; the frightful 
climate — all rendered his expedition one of very great 
hazard and danger indeed. But he combined his 
strategetic plans with such skill, and acted with such 
fearful energy, that, within the short space of eighty 
days, he had burned down the principal Kabyle villages, 
sacked no end of storehouses and granaries, defeated 
the Kabyles, with dreadful slaughter, in twenty distinct 
combats and six pitched battles, and compelled them, 
crushed and appalled, to sue for peace, and to sacrifice 
a large portion of their territory. 

Summoned to Paris, after this expedition, the mili- 
tary and personal importance of M. de St. Arnaud was 
further enhanced by his being promoted to the rank 
of Lieutenant- General, and appointed to the command 
of one of the divisions of the army of Paris. Not long 
after, Louis Napoleon saw that the day for the exe- 
cution of his long-matured plans was drawing nigh, and 



MARSHAL DE ST. ARNAUD. 67 

lie appointed the general to the Ministry of War. 
This, in itself, was equivalent to a declaration of 
hostilities against the National Assembly ; inasmuch as 
the General, during the short time he had been in 
Paris, had made no secret whatever of his intention 
to second Louis Napoleon in anything he might think 
fit to undertake. Before long, the Assembly, fearing 
the projects of the Prince, proposed to strip him of the 
virtual command of the army, which belonged to him 
by the Constitution, and to give it to the President 
of the Assembly. On this occasion the General made 
a fiery speech, in which he broadly declared that the 
proposition would not be submitted to ; and before the 
Assembly had come to a vote on the matter, he hurried 
off to the Tuileries to take measures for resisting, arms 
in hand, the execution of the project. The Assembly, 
terrified at his energy, rejected the motion. "Eh!" 
said the General with a grim smile, when told of its 
vote, " it is well that it has done so ; or, by heaven ! 
I would have swept it away !" 

The blow thus threatened was not long withheld. 
After midnight on the 1st December, 1851, there 
assembled in a small room of the palace of the Elysee, 
the Prince President, General St. Arnaud, Count de 
Moray, and M. de Persigny. Around a table, and by 
the light of a small lamp, these persons definitely settled 



68 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

the plan of the coup-cVetat. Fearful was the respon- 
sibility they were about to incur — their lives were at 
stake, the destinies of France, and, to a certain extent, 
of Europe also, were likewise at stake — but they were 
as calm as if they were engaged in the most ordinary 
business. Every detail being arranged, Louis Napoleon, 
to diminish as much as possible, in the event of failure, 
the responsibility of each, gave them sealed letters 
containing his orders in writing ; and, with a quiet 
shake of the hand, they separated. The next morn- 
ing the Assembly w T as dispersed, and the principal 
members of it were in custody. Paris was swarming 
with troops ; and the populace were told that Louis 
Napoleon was their master, subject to the ratification 
of the people. The day after, resistance was made ; 
the day following that, it was renewed ; but the grim 
General at the War-office caused to be stuck up in every 
street the proclamation — " Whoever may be taken with 
arms in his hands, or throwing up a barricade, shall be 
instantly shot !" and he sent forth his armed legions 
with peremptory orders to crush the rising at every 
cost. For two days the clang of musketry and the 
thunder of cannon shook every house in Paris; and 
wounded, and dead, and dying were to be seen 
everywhere. And then the spirit of the Parisians was 
cowed, and Louis Napoleon triumphed. 



MARSHAL DE ST. ARNAUD. 69 

The General's share in the coup-d'etat is, doubtlessly, 
the greatest act of his life. In a mere military point 
of view, it is admirable : admirable in general concep- 
tion ; admirable for the manner in which all matters 
of detail, and they were innumerable, were provided 
for and executed ; admirable for the skill with which 
the troops were distributed; and admirable for the 
minute attention paid to the comforts of the men, and 
the pains taken to encourage them in their terrible 
duty. Even the implacable severity with which the 
General acted may, in looking at it retrospectively, be 
considered as not undeserving of praise, though it 
drew forth a cry of horror at the time, for it prevented 
the insurrection from spreading, and thereby checked 
bloodshed ; and, by showing that the determination 
was to conquer, whatever the cost, it saved France 
from civil war and anarchy. Moreover, the astonishing 
political success which has attended the coup-d'etat may 
fairly be pleaded as a set-off to the objections to 
which, perhaps, that measure is liable, on the score of 
morality. 

For his services on this great occasion M. de St. 
Arnaud was promoted to the dignity of Marshal, to 
that of Senator, to that of Grand Cross of the Legion 
of Honour — to we know not what besides ; and he 
retained the Ministry of War, which made him Com- 



70 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

mander-in-Chief of the whole army. What honours 
were these for the man who thirty-six years before was 
only a simple soldier ! — what success was this for the 
man who had so despaired of ever rising in the army 
that he had abandoned it for trade! — what a result 
was this to a career commenced as a Legitimist ! 

Although, from what has been said, it will be seen 
that the Marshal must be made of as stern stuff as 
ever entered into the composition of a soldier, yet in 
his private relations he is singularly confiding and 
affectionate. He has the reputation of being one of 
the best of husbands ; as a father, none was kinder — 
but he is childless now; as a friend, he is faithful, 
loving, and generous ; and as a simple acquaintance, it 
would not be easy to find any more charming than 
he. In one respect he is favourably distinguished from 
nearly all the generals and officers in the French army : 
they care not a straw for religion, and he is strict in 
the observances of his Church. When Minister, he 
had a chapel built in the ministry ; and he passed a 
portion of every day in it. 

In person the Marshal is tall and slight, and the 
general character of his features is half stern, half 
chivalrous, reminding one of that of the good and brave 
Don Quixote. For some time previous to his depar- 
ture for the East he was seriously ilJ, and when he 



f 

MARSHAL DE ST. ARNAUD. 71 

last figured in public in Paris lie seemed scarcely able 
to sit Iris horse ; but the climate of Turkey and the 
excitement of his position have, it is said, made quite 
a new man of him. 

Such has been, and such is, the commander of our 
French allies in our war with the Czar. If, as a 
politician, he is not to be admired for his consistency, 
the credit of being an excellent soldier is due to him. 
Few officers of the present day, indeed, have seen 
more hard work, and been in more hard fighting : his 
campaigns, in fact, are not fewer than thirty ; whilst 
as a general, though as yet he has not had to contend 
with European armies, he has done sufficient to warrant 
the assertion that under him the French will increase 
their military glory. It would, however, be flattery 
to say that the Marshal enjoys in France the popularity 
and esteem which generally attend his exalted position, 
and which were possessed by Soult and Bugeaud, and 
in our own army by W ellington. But this is owing to 
the fact that his African exploits as Commander-in- 
Chief were performed at a time when the public 
attention was distracted by the moving incidents of a 
revolutionary drama, the end of which none could fore- 
see, and that the part he played in the coup-cTetat 
placed him under the terrible necessity of acting against 
a considerable portion of his own countrymen. Nor 



72 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

must it be overlooked that calumny, arising from 
political and personal hatred, has laboured hard to 
tarnish his fair fame. As, however, the French are 
neither unjust long, nor rancorous long, they will, we 
doubt not, consider the first victory he may gain over 
the Bussians as a graceful opportunity of doing justice 
to his merits, and for repairing their past severity. 
The English, on their part, will, we are sure, eagerly 
seize the same occasion for a display of enthusiastic 
admiration ; and all the more gladly from the fact that 
he professes to like England well. 

» 

VII. 

EESCHID PACHA. 

If robur et ces triplex must have surrounded the 
heart of the man who first braved the ocean in a ship, 
that of the man who undertook the gigantic task of 
reforming the old, unwieldy, rotten, despotic, san- 
guinary, and every way abominable Empire of the 
Turks, should have been not only cased in, but con- 
structed of, materials fifty thousand times harder, if 
such there be. For, whilst the worst that could have 
happened to the bold mariner would have been to meet 
with what penny-a-liners call a "watery grave," the 



RESCHID PACHA. 73 

reformer ran the risk of bringing on himself personal 
destruction, and of causing the whole rickety edifice of 
the Empire to fall in with a tremendous crash — a fall 
which would have been almost as disastrous to all 
Europe as to the Turks themselves. Having undertaken 
that task, and incurred that risk, we must suppose that 
Eeschid Pacha's heart is made of the toughest materials 
that ever entered the human frame ; and when, after 
glancing at his career, we reflect on the great reforms 
he has effected, the immense difficulties he has com- 
bated, the powerful and malignant foes he has opposed, 
the severe reverses he has sustained, we feel that the 
supposition must be well-founded. And yet the man is 
a poet — a true poet — that is to say, has much of the 
refined sympathy, the tender sensibility of woman! 
Here is a seeming contradiction, which Horace did not 
think of in his hero, "who despised the swelling sea 
and the Acroceraniuan rocks. But truth is stranger 
than fiction, and men are not always such as poets 
paint. 

Mustapha Eeschid Pacha, for such is his right name, 
was born in 1802, of a mother who belonged to a 
family which had given Grand Viziers to the State, 
and of a father, Mustapha EfFendi by name, who, as 
his father and his father's father before him had done, 
held the confidential office of steward to the Mosque 



74 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

of the Sultan Bajazet, at Constantinople. The place 
was an hereditary one, and at the old man's death 
ought to have descended to young Mustapha Rescind ; 
but the Sultan Mahmoud, from some freak, refused to 
let him have it. Such a disappointment, at the very 
commencement of life, was very mortifying. He, how- 
ever, bore it with true Turkish philosophy, and his 
mother, a very intelligent woman, who had taken care 
to give him the very best education the country 
afforded, determined that, as she possessed some poli- 
tical influence, he should devote himself to the public 
service. It so happened that, when he was about 
eighteen years of age, the famous Ali Pacha, who had 
held the highest offices in the State, was appointed to 
the command of the Turkish forces which were sent to 
quell the insurrection in the Morea. As this personage 
had married his sister, the mother got him to make 
Rescind his kiatib, or private secretary. Air's operations 
were not crowned with success, .and after awhile he 
was recalled and disgraced. Young Rescind, who had 
bravely shared the hardships and dangers of the war, 
was thereupon admitted to a clerkship in the Foreign* 
office. Before he had been there long, his skill in 
drawing up despatches, and his general talents, 
attracted the attention of the Grand Yizier, Izzet 
Pacha. The old man made him his private secretary. 



RESCHID PACHA. 75 

Subsequently, he became the private secretary of Pertew 
Pacha, a great State dignitary. At that time the 
situation of Turkey presented one of the most difficult 
problems that statesmen have ever had to solve. On 
the one hand, it had become tolerably evident to every 
enlightened observer, that by remaining cabined, 
cribbed, confined in the laws of Mahomet, by slavish 
adherence to slothful customs, by obstinately refusing 
to learn anything from Western Europe, by, in short, 
persisting in being an anachronism, half ridiculous, half 
atrocious, in the Europe of the nineteenth century — the 
Turks would get to be so frightfully corrupt, so 
abhorred by the millions of Christians subject to their 
rule, so incessantly assailed by domestic insurrections 
and foreign foes, so despised by the whole civilised 
world, that they could expect nothing less, in the long 
run, than to be annihilated as a European community, 
and expelled from the vast and magnificent territories 
they had occupied so long. On the other hand, it was 
to be feared that, as the laws of Mahomet, which are 
temporal as well as religious, had made them what 
they formerly were — a great and a conquering people 
— as it was, in the name and in virtue of those laws, 
that they had been a scourge and a pest to Europe, 
and had succeeded, in spite of her, in establishing 
themselves permanently in one of her fairest portions, 



76 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

and in subjecting to their iron rule many of their native 
races, it was to be feared, as this was so, that any 
change in the said laws, and in the manners and 
customs, and the system of government, arising out of 
them, would entirely change their religious, social, and 
political character — would, in fact, make the Turks 
cease to be Turks; and would thereby, perhaps, on 
account of their peculiar position, render their destruc- 
tion, though slower, not less certain, than if effected 
by force. The Sultan Mahmoud, seeing only one side 
of the question, was a wholesale reformer ; a red-hot 
Marylebone radical, in the days when radicals flourished, 
or a modern continental revolutionist, could not, in- 
deed, have taken a more one-sided view, or have acted 
with more indiscreet haste. Pertew Pacha, Kesehid's 
patron, on the contrary, was an honest old Turk of the 
old school, and he took an equally prejudiced, equally 
narrow view of the state of things. " No reform ! no 
change ! let us remain as the Prophet made us, and 
as our fathers were !" Such was the language of the 
old man — such the precepts which he laboured hard, as 
if from prescience of his future greatness, to instil into 
Reschid's mind. Reschid, to a certain extent, sym- 
pathised with him ; for, in spite of his youth, he saw 
clearly that it was not by cutting off beards, wearing 
brown frock-coats and tight-fitting trousers, getting 



RESCHID PACHA. 77 

drunk daily on champagne, in spite of the prohibition 
of wine by the Koran, listening to bad Italian music, 
and bastinadoing unfortunate soldiers, to make them 
look like emperors, that the Turks generally would be 
made less ignorant, less brutal, less barbarous ; and yet 
that was what the Sultan did, and insisted on his prin- 
cipal subjects doing — as if the petty forms, frivolities, 
and vices of civilisation were civilisation itself. Neither 
did he think that the moment at which Turkey was 
nearly rent to pieces by insurrections in her provinces, 
and seriously menaced by the hostility of Eussia and 
of all the great Powers, was a favourable one for 
effecting a sweeping change in her social institutions. 
But still he was too enlightened not to see that the 
hour was near at which, to prevent her absolute dis- 
solution, some heroic remedies would be necessary. 
Fortunately for himself, however, he was neither old 
enough nor exalted enough in station to commit himself 
ostensibly either to one line of policy or the other; 
and so, by a little skilful trimming, he managed to 
escape the ill-will of the Sultan, and to preserve the 
friendship of Per tew. Thus trimming, he continued 
to be employed in the Foreign-office for several years ; 
and, having risen in rank, he was intrusted with a 
share in the negotiations with "Russia, which ended in 
the disastrous treaty of Adrianople, and in those which, 



78 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

after the battle of Koniah, led to a convention still 
more unfavourable with the victorious Mehemet Ali. 

The year 1834 must be considered as the decisive 
turning-point in Eeschid Pacha's career. He was sent 
as resident ambassador to Paris, and subsequently to 
London (he was, by the way, the first Turk who 
obtained such an appointment, the Sultans having 
previously contented themselves with sending special 
ambassadors to foreign courts to treat of particular 
affairs, and recalling them when they were concluded). 
In those cities, and especially in London, he was struck 
with admiration at the working of the constitutional 
system ; and he resolved, on his return home, to use 
his best efforts to prepare the way for introducing some 
modification of it into his own country. Wholesale 
reforms were the sole preparation ; and his official 
experience had convinced him that, though they might 
be attended with some danger, they were preferable to 
letting things take their downward course. After 
about two years' stay in France and England, he re- 
ceived a notification from his protector, Pertew Pacha, 
who had been appointed Grand Vizier, that he must 
return home immediately, to accept the post of Minister 
of Foreign Affairs. On his arrival in Turkey, he 
found, to his horror, that Pertew had been strangled 
by order of the Sultan; and it turned out that this 



RESCHID PACHA. 79 

order had been wrung from the Sovereign when dead- 
drunk ("his custom always of an afternoon") by Halil 
Pacha, his Majesty's son-in-law, and other intrigues, 
not on any grounds of political expediency, but entirely 
from personal animosity. With more courage than 
might have been expected, Rescind Pacha remonstrated 
with the Commander of the Faithful ; and, instead of 
being bow-stringed for his pains, had the satisfaction 
of hearing his Majesty express profound regret, and 
direct the punishment of those who had deceived him. 
Notwithstanding his benefactor's death, Reschid became 
Minister, and he immediately commenced the work of 
reform, on which his heart was set. But his measures 
created dissatisfaction amongst the bigoted old Turks, 
and amongst certain pseudo-reformers whom he had 
superseded ; and they were particularly displeasing 
both to Mehemet Ali and the Czar, the bitterest 
enemies of Turkey, and for the same reason, because 
they seemed likely to be beneficial to that country. 
The most scandalous intrigues were set on foot by all 
these parties. Rescind combated them with great 
energy until 1838, when he was obliged to succumb to 
them. He was dismissed from his high office; but, 
happily for him, was not called on to undergo the little 
operation of being strangled with a silken cord, as 
Pertew was, and as many Ministers had been. So 



80 TUB MEN OF THE "WAR. 

great, however, was the hostility of his enemies, that 
he deemed it prudent to leave Constantinople ; and as 
they were glad to get rid of him at any price, they 
allowed him to be appointed ambassador at London. 
Before proceeding to London, he took an opportunity 
of visiting Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and Eome; in the 
latter city he w r as admitted to an audience of the Pope, 
and was the first Turk who had ever deigned to accept 
one. Arrived in London, he laboured most strenuously 
to induce the English Government to support Turkey 
against Mehemet Ali on the one hand, and Russia on 
the other ; but we were governed by Whigs in those 
days, and the Whigs could not hear talk of an offensive 
and defensive alliance against the Czar. Prom London 
he went to Paris, on a diplomatic mission, and there he 
received some startling news, the defeat of the Turks 
by the Egyptians at Nezib, the loss of the Turkish fleet, 
and the death of the Sultan. He hastened back to 
London, and, with much difficulty, got our Cabinet to 
join in a treaty with three of the great Continental 
Powers to defend Turkey against Mehemet Ali. Then 
he went to Constantinople. It is a rare thing for a 
new Sultan to take into his confidence men who have 
at any time enjoyed the favour of a predecessor ; but 
Abdul Medjid admitted him to the Ministry. After 
a while, he had the genius to plan, and the courage 



RESCHID PACHA. 81 

to proclaim, the famous decree, which, under the name 
of Hatti Scheriff of Gulhane, is one of the most remark- 
able documents of modern times. It guarantees the 
lives, honour, and fortune of all Turkish subjects, 
Christians as well as Mussulmen, forbids private 
poisonings or executions of any kind, except in virtue 
of regular judgments, regulates the levying of the taxes, 
fixing the mode of making levies for the army, and 
effects other sweeping reforms. In Europe generally 
such things are a matter of course, but in Turkey 
they were never heard of before. In March, 1841, 
Eeschid was again ejected from the Ministry, and 
exiled in the embassy at Paris. His situation in that 
post was at first a difficult one, as the Egyptian affair 
had irritated France even more against Turkey than 
against England ; but by prudence and conciliation, 
aided by the healing virtue of time, he succeeded in 
changing her from an enemy into a friend. He re- 
mained in France until 1847, when he returned to 
Constantinople, and re-entered the Cabinet as Minister 
of Foreign Affairs. Since then he has been Minister, 
with the exception of intervals, more or less long, 
during which he was excluded by the dirty intrigues of 
his adversaries or of the harem. 

From the preceding scanty outline of his career, 
the reader will perceive that Rescind Pacha is an 
6 



82 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

extraordinary man ; and he will be inclined to think 
that he merits the designation of a great statesman. 
He does so, indeed, for the mingled boldness and 
prudence which characterises his reforms. By the 
Hatti Scheriff of Guihane; by decreeing equality of 
rights between Christians and Turks ; by constituting 
regular courts of justice, and purifying the administra- 
tion of the law ; by destroying the abominable system 
of farming out the taxes, by which frightful extortion 
was practised ; by encouraging the formation of some- 
thing resembling municipal institutions, and admitting 
Christians to them ; by abolishing torture ; by regulating 
the quarantine ; by teaching the Turks that it is not 
sinful to take measures for checking the spread of the 
plague or any other visitation; by encouraging trade 
and abolishing monopolies ; by incessant and indefati- 
gable efforts to make the more enlightened portion of 
his countrymen appreciate, and become qualified for, 
such a measure of constitutionalism as is compatible 
with Turkish manners and genius ; by these, and a 
thousand other measures, which it would be tedious to 
recapitulate, Eeschid Pacha has done ten thousand 
times more in the way of reform than the Sultan 
Mahmoud, with all his bastinadoing, and tippling, and 
fashioning of garments, ever dared even to dream of. 
And so well-timed, and so prudently executed, have 



EESCHID PACHA. 83 

been these reforms, that they have not only not caused 
the clownfal of the Empire, which many persons feared 
would be inevitable from any change, but they have 
not even weakened it in any way ; they have, on the 
contrary, added to its strength and efficiency, and have 
given it, what thirty years ago seemed a gross impro- 
bability, a reasonable hope of lasting for many years 
to come. What, too, is very singular, is, that Keschid 
has had the tact to cause his reforms — though, as we 
have said, far more sweeping than those of Mahmoud — 
to produce far less dissatisfaction. They have, to be 
sure, drawn forth doleful howls from some of the most 
stubborn of the old Turks, and grumbling amongst the 
masses ; but they have not been bitterly cursed, as 
were those of Mahmoud, nor have they roused the 
spirit of fanatical resistance which his met with. This, 
however, is, we are inclined to think, owing to his 
having practised what Papists would call a "pious 
fraud." He boldly asserted, and made the people be- 
lieve, that his reforms were in strict accordance with 
the letter and the spirit of the Koran ; whereas many, 
nay, most of them, are in fiat contradiction to both. If 
the Mussulman were a true religion, we should, no 
doubt, feel shocked at seeing a minister deliberately 
violate its dictates ; but as we know that it is a mass 
of imposture, we, the happy possessors of the only truo 



84 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

faith, need, perhaps, feel no great concern on that 
score ; and, as to his descending to the meanness of 
saying what is false — why, it is no new thing in state- 
craft, and is, besides, no business of ours. Another 
thing, which shows Eeschid to be a great statesman, 
is, that he is bent on reforming men as well as things ; 
and that, in execution of this design, he not only 
insists, so far as possible, on the personnel of the 
Government being reputable in every respect, but he 
has had the courage to assail some of the greatest men 
in the State for doing wrong — has caused some to be 
reprimanded, and others dismissed with disgrace, and 
others, the most difficult thing of all, to disgorge wealth 
which they had obtained by fraud or extortion. We 
further consider his statesmanlike capacity proved by 
the fact that, better than any of his countrymen, he 
has always seen and understood the nefarious projects 
of Russia against his country, even when she seemed 
most friendly ; and that, better than any of his country- 
men, he has always felt that it was from an intimate 
alliance with England that Turkey should seek for 
salvation; because England is disinterested, and gene- 
rous, and all-powerful. But, perhaps, the crowning 
proof of his ability is, that, in spite of immense obstacles, 
he has so schemed and negotiated, as to compel England 
and France to stand by Turkey in her conflict with the 



RESCHID PACHA. 85 

Czar, and to give her the help of mighty armies and 
I fleets. In less able hands than his, Turkey might have 
| been abandoned to her fate — perhaps, even, as in the 
|! "untoward event" of Navarino, had Eussia, England, 
| and France arrayed against her. We have said that 
■ Eeschid is a poet. The Turks are a poetical people, 
J| par excellence, and possess as noble a collection of 
! written poetry as any nation in the world can boast of, 
not excepting our own. It is asserted by competent 
I authorities, that the poems of Eeschid deserve to rank 
with the very best. Unfortunately, they have not been 
published ; but they are represented to be chiefly lyric, 
and are stated to combine much profound sentiment, 
with gorgeous oriental imagery, to express thoughts 
that breathe in words that burn. In his early man- 
hood, he and his benefactor Pertew were accustomed 
to correspond in poetry, and more than one weighty 
piece of public business has been despatched between 
them by means of elegant effusions in verse. Even 
now, w T hen harassed and distracted by affairs of state, 
Eeschid not unfrequently seeks solace in song. How 
wonderful is the combination of intellectual qualities, 
which enables a man to shine alike in the brilliant 
imaginative productions of the poet and the stern, 
harsh, often terrible realities of the statesman ! But, 
though to be poet or statesman, is the highest glory to 



86 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

which men of the loftiest genius are content to aspire, 
Eeschid is something more than statesman and poet : he 
is one of the most learned men in the Turkish Empire. 
In Turkish, Arabian, and Persian literature he is almost 
without an equal. He has a comprehensive knowledge 
of all the modern sciences ; he entertains a passionate 
admiration of the fine arts ; and his knowledge oj 
ancient and modern history is, it is alleged, not far 
inferior to that of Macauley. He, besides, speaks and 
writes several languages, and is particularly well versed 
in French and English. Moreover, another strange 
thing in a poet — he is an admirable logician ; and, if 
his time were not more profitably occupied, he would 
probably take immense pleasure in teaching wrangling 
in the schools, or in writing ponderous tomes on logic. 

Nor have we yet recapitulated all that can be said 
in his favour. Although he, in no small degree, hi$ 
brought about the present war, and is determined to 
carry it on most energetically, he entertains as pro- 
found a horror of carnage, and as great a contempt of 
the "pride, pomp, and circumstance" of warfare, as any 
broad-brimmed member of the Peace Congress. Equal 
to his hatred of fighting is his admiration of diplomacy. 
In his eyes, nothing in this world is to be compared to 
European diplomacy — it is a sacred and a holy thing ; 
and he would leave, if he could, everything to be 



EES CHID PACHA. 87 

settled by it, from a great international dissension 
down to the question of the shaving of Turkish chins. 
So, admiring diplomacy, he looks with reverence on ail 
diplomatists. Especially does he esteem the distin- 
guished statesman who at Constantinople is charged 
to represent Great Britain. He thinks Lord Stratford 
de BedclhTe's talent unapproachable. He knows that 
his lordship has long been a faithful defender of Tur- 
key ; he admires his sagacious counsel and his firmness, 
tempered with prudence, in all things ; and he is deeply 
attached to him as a personal friend. His sentiments 
with respect to England are precisely what might be 
expected from those which he entertains for her am- 
bassador. He admires and loves her as much as a 
foreigner can do, and on all occasions is glad if he can 
do her pleasure. In his character of reformer, he likes 
everything European, and mixes as much as he can in 
European society. He imitates European customs ; 
dresses nearly in the European style; sits on a chair 
in the European fashion ; eats with knife and fork as 
Europeans do ; has only one wife, like Europeans, and 
is more faithful and devoted to her than many Euro- 
peans, especially on the Continent, are to their wives. 
He has, besides, several children, and has brought 
them up in the European way, with all the care and 
tenderness of the good European father. In character 



88 THE MEN OP THE WAR. 

he is mild and gentle, generous and confiding. To his 
friends he is said to be all that friend can be ; and to 
strangers he is courteous in the extreme. His bearing 
is unpretending, but has in it a dash of the old Turkish 
dignity, which is very pleasing. Although so com- 
pletely Europeanised in many things, he manifests on 
all occasions, even the most critical or agitating, the 
imperturbable calm of the old Turk. In person, too, 
notwithstanding his modern dress, he is Turkish — 
squarish, solid, rather heavy ; and his regular features 
and sun-burned skin are of Turkish expression: but 
there are a depth and brilliancy in the eye which are 
not often remarked in the Mussulman. 

Many and great as are the qualities of Eeschid 
Pacha, he, like the rest of mankind, is not by any 
means complete perfection. He has got some terrible 
vices. Ambition is one of them. His enemies declare 
that he is sternly 

a Resolved to ruin or to rule the State 

and certain it is that no man clings to power with 
greater tenacity when he possesses it, or intrigues more 
incessantly to obtain it when he has it not — that no 
man acts more unscrupulously to destroy the position 
of an adversary, or to get rid of an inconvenient col- 
league — that no one is more greedy of honours and 



RESGHID PACHA. 89 

dignities. Not content with obtaining all that a sub- 
ject could aspire to, has he not made the Sultan create 
a dignity for him alone ? and has he not quite recently 
compelled his Majesty to give a daughter in marriage 
to one of his sons, though there were grave political 
reasons for avoiding, or at least postponing, such a 
connexion ? Another of his vices is the love of money. 
He boasts that he has not pillaged the Treasury as 
Turkish Ministers are wont to do ; and that he has not 
accepted bribes from foreign Powers as most Turkish 
Ministers have ; and, perhaps, his boast is well founded. 
But, wo ! to the poor wretch who solicits a place or 
a favour from him if he does not let him hear the 
chink of his gold ! Wo ! too, to those who are com- 
pelled to visit him on business or courtesy, for he 
makes his servants importune them for gratuities (Lord 
Stratford is seldom released from his clutches for less 
than 500 piastres) ; and if report does not speak falsely, 
he takes all that is given, or at least the greater part ! 
But, what is infinitely worse, is, that he allows his wife 
to exercise the profitable trade of buying female chil- 
dren in the slave-market, training them for the pleasures 
of the harem, and then selling them to rich old Turks 
at a high price ! 

After all, however, the sun has spots; and so, in 
spite of the vices which stain the character of Rescind 



90 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

Pacha, there can be no question that his intellectual 
qualities, and his immense services to his country, 
warrant us in saying, in the words of M. Guizot years 
ago, "He is a great man — the only one the East 
possesses !" 

e 

VIII. 

PRINCE GORTSCHAKOFF v 

With the exception of the savage barbarian, 
Suwarrow, most of the really distinguished generals 
and admirals of Eussia, from the time of Peter down- 
wards, have been foreign adventurers. Witness Munich, 
Elphinstone, Diebitsch, and a host of others. Paskie- 
witsch himself, whom the Russians exalt as the 
conqueror of Erivan, Warsaw, and Hungary, cannot be 
cited as a, proof of the inexactitude of this assertion ; 
for, as was shown in the article on him, his military 
renown has been absurdly exaggerated from political 
considerations, and, in point of fact, hardly exceeds 
that of one of our third-rate Indian generals. At this 
very moment it may safely be said, that the best com- 
manders in the Russian service are foreigners, or the 
descendants of foreigners — Luders, Rudiger, Danneberg, 
Osten Sacken, and (if he be still living) Schilders. But 
though the Russian born and bred commanders are 



PRINCE GORTSCHAKOFF. 91 

inferior to their German and other foreign colleagues, 
it is they who secure the highest posts, the best pay, 
the greater number of decorations — they whose names 
are trumpeted forth to credulous Europe. In thus 
puffing up its own native generals, and casting into the 
shade its abler foreign hirelings, the Russian Govern- 
ment is faithful to its system of employing audacious 
falsehood to make its power appear greater than it is. 

Prince Michael Dmitrievitch GortschakofF is a tho- 
rough Eussian General, and has been treated in the 
regular Eussian way : that is to say, his exploits have 
been of the most ordinary kind — and yet he has been 
rewarded with honours, dignities, and commands which 
would have been amply sufficient to recompense the 
genius and the services of the best of Napoleon's 
marshals or of our own Wellington. 

The early part of the Prince's career is so very 
obscure that it is not known out of the War-office at 
St. Petersburgh what regiment he first joined, or how 
or when he climbed up to the grade of Major- General. 
The very first public mention that a most diligent 
search has enabled us to discover of him is, that he 
commanded a portion of the artillery — he is an 
artillery officer — in the war against Turkey in 1828-9, 
and that he took part in the famous siege of Silistria. 
This siege, it will be remembered, lasted for many 



92 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

"weeks — though it was carried on by a mighty army, 
and though the town was only defended by mud walls, 
manned by, comparatively, a mere handful of Turks. 
Nothing could be more disgraceful to the Russian 
army than their inability to take the soi-clisant fortress ; 
and of this disgrace a large share must be awarded to 
Prince Gortschakoff, as one of the commanders of the 
artillery, on which the chief operations devolved. 

But, in addition to the discredit which attached to 
him in common with the whole army, the Prince 
contrived to earn some still grosser, which must be 
considered exclusively his own. At a critical moment, 
he was ordered by the General-in-chief to sweep down 
with his artillery a large body of the Turks who were 
making a vigorous sortie : but he actually manoeuvred 
in such a way as to run his guns into a deep fosse, 
where they stuck fast, and not a shot could he fire. 
After this it was not considered prudent to employ 
him again where skill was required ; and he was placed 
in a division charged to make marches and counter- 
marches, with the view of distracting the attention of 
the Turks from the real operations of the commander- 
in-chief. The war terminated, he was employed under 
Count Pahlen, but did nothing in particular. He 
afterwards received a command of artillery in the army 
which was sent to quell the Polish insurrection. In 



PRINCE GORTSCHAKOFF. 93 

this war, which was not very long, he more than once 
allowed it to be seen that he does not possess great 
military capacity. At Ostrolinki, for example, the 
Poles attacked him with such impetuous fury, that they 
very nearly carried off his seventy guns — and yet they 
had to cross a river to get at him. At Grochoff he 
nearly blew to atoms a brigade of Russian troops. At 
Warsaw, in the last fatal battle in which Poland was 
again crushed, he acted so wildly that old Marshal 
Paskiewitsch stormed and swore. To be just, however, 
it must be admitted that when at last he did get his 
guns to bear, he perpetrated awful slaughter. He was 
not again employed in the field until the Czar inter- 
vened w T ith an army in Hungary, on behalf of Austria. 
He gained so little distinction in that country, that in 
all the accounts of the war that have been published, 
in German, French, English, Magyar, his name is not 
once mentioned; though those of other generals of 
inferior standing occur almost as frequently as that of 
Paskiewitsch himself. Lastly, he was appointed com- 
mander-in-chief of the army which, a little more than 
a year ago, was sent across the Pruth to occupy the 
Danubian Principalities. Blind obedience to the orders 
of the Czar is the characteristic of Russians ; but not 
even the army could refrain from manifestations of 
discontent at seeing the Prince placed at its head, in 



94 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

preference to General Luders, whose services and 
talents gave him an incontestable title to the post. 
What he has done in the Principalities is known to all 
Europe, and the unanimous and unhesitating verdict of 
Europe is, that it proves him to be as incompetent a 
general as ever took the field. His forces were from 
the first immensely more numerous than those of 
Turkey; and yet he has been defeated at Oltenitza, at 
Turtukai, at Giurgevo, at Kalafat, at Citate, at Mat chin, 
at Silistria — defeated always and everywhere. His 
whole plan of operations, moreover, was so defective, 
that Marshal Paskiewitsch had to be sent to correct it, 
and at this moment, in spite of that correction, he is 
in full retreat, chased by the triumphant Turks. 

And now in presence of such services place his 
rewards. He is knight of we know not how many 
orders ; he rejoices in the brief and harmonious title of 
Vasche Vuisokprevoslcoditehtvo ; he is aide-de-camp 
General to the Emperor ; he is entitled to wear on his 
breast his Majesty's portrait set in diamonds — a 
supreme distinction in Eussia ; he has been military 
governor of Warsaw, and in Prince Paskiewitsch's ab- 
sence, generalissimo and governor of the entire kingdom 
of Poland ; he is now in command of a vast army; he 
is member of the Council of the Empire ; on certain 
state occasions he possesses precedency over others of 



PRINCE GORTSCHAXOFF. 95 

his class and degree ; and it was he who had the high 
honour of being deputed to represent the Czar and his 
army at the funeral of Wellington — a proof of imperial 
favour, envied by the highest in the land. Verily, 
he would have obtained none of these great things if 
he had not been a great Russian noble. 

And he is a Russian. In the fullest sense of the 
term he is a Muscovite of the old stock. That he 
may have all the Russian virtues is very probable ; but 
most certainly he possesses, in a striking degree, all 
those vicious peculiarities which distinguish Russians 
from the members of happier and more civilised com- 
munities. Though of gainly person and aristocratic 
manner, ho is not able to look you full in the face with 
honest frankness ; but when speaking, eyes you askance 
and turns away if you look on him. This peculiarity 
is very painful to Englishmen; but nothing is more 
common in Russia. In truth, it is possessed by every- 
bodyj from the moujick up to the Prince, and it arises 
from the fact that the great terror and the terrible 
espionage exercised by the Government render people 
as much afraid of betraying their secret thoughts by 
the expression of the eye as they are in language. 
The Prince, again, is a Muscovite by his base servility 
to the Czar : to secure the countenance of his Majesty's 
favour, he would submit to anything. Indeed, in all 



96 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

Russia, with the exception of Prince Menschikoff, there 
is not to be found a meaner or more cringing courtier ; 
and that is saying a great deal, for all Russians are 
courtiers. It is as a courtier, in fact, and not as a 
general, that he has gained the honours and rewards he 
enjoys ; much as he has seen of tented fields and of the 
ordering of battles, he is a carpet-knight after all! 
He is a Russian by his passion for tawdry splendour, 
and frivolous amusements, and luxurious living ; and 
by his intense repugnance to all that can enlighten and 
enlarge the mind. He is a Russian by his love of 
French wines, and especially of champagne. He is 
throroughly Muscovite, too, by the way in which he 
speaks to strangers — soft, specious, and insinuating, and 
profuse in offers of services and friendship ; though his 
heart, the while, as the Russian way is, gives the lie 
to the tongue. He is Muscovite by the implacable 
severity with which he governs the serfs on his domains, 
and exorts from them the uttermost farthing; doing, 
thereby, on a small scale, what his master, the Czar, 
does on a large one. Most Muscovite is he by the 
galling humiliation which he feels on contrasting the 
civilisation of Western Europe with the hideous bar- 
barism of his own country, and by the burning desire 
with which that contrast fills him, not to try to raise 
Russia to the Western level, but to reduce the West to 



PRINCE GORTSCIIAKOFF. 97 

Russian despotism, ignorance, poverty, and infamy. 
Than he, indeed, no Eussian counts more fondly or 
more confidently on the realisation of the prediction 
of the great Peter, that Europe must and shall be 
dominated by the barbarous hordes of the north. 

As a general in the field, he is peculiarly and em- 
phatically Eussian. Under him the peculation which 
is the besetting vice of Eussian functionaries thrives 
gloriously. Under him the soldiers are half-starved, 
ill-clothed, ill-lodged, and scandalously neglected in 
every respect. The army in the Principalities ought, 
by the regulations, to have received five meals of meat 
a week ; but the average has hardly been one, and 
that one was not of meat, but of carrion. It ought to 
have had a certain quantity daily of tolerable bread — 
such was the order from St. Petersburgh. Now, what 
the Eussians call tolerable bread is a horrid black 
substance, which in Western Europe, and most certainly 
in England, would hardly be considered good enough 
for the porcine race; but what he gave them was 
worse even than that, and it was dealt out most 
stintedly. His notion, indeed, of what is necessary for 
an army is proved from the fact that he entered into 
contracts with some farmers to have his soldiers fed 
and lodged for twenty-five paras — somewhere about 
three-halfpence — per head per day ; and ho made not 



98 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

the slightest objection to their being compelled to sleep 
pell-mell With swine. What from lack of food and 
clothing, lodging and medicines, the Russian army has 
lost thousands and tens of thousands of its bravest 
men ; and he witnessed, day after clay, the fearful 
mortality with the utmost unconcern. But whilst 
treating his men in this scandalous way, the Prince 
subjects them to discipline of which, in Europe, we 
have no idea. They are beaten with sticks, according 
to the wanton humour of their brutal officers, from 
corporals up to colonels ; and not a day, it is said, 
passes on which the wailings of some dozen of them, 
in course of being scourged to death, do not fill their 
comrades with dismay. In battle, he, without hesita- 
tion, drives the unfortunates at the point of the 
bayonet on positions which it is absolutely impossible 
they can take, and which, if taken, would be worth 
nothing. 

It is generally his lot to be defeated in every combat ; 
but, with sublime impudence, he claims the victory, and 
sings a Te Deum for it. He oppresses the people in 
whose country he is, in the most atrocious way ; yet 
makes them sign addresses, expressing profound grati- 
tude for his humanity. He robs and pillages by 
wholesale, and yet pompously announces that his 
mission is to " protect" his victims. He audaciously 



PRINCE GORTSCHAKQFF, 99 

accuses the enemy of needless severity, and yet issues 
orders of the day in which he recommends his men to 
be ruthless in slaughter. He pretends to despise reli- 
gious fanaticism, and yet makes his brutal army believe 
that Saint Sergius and the Panagia are leading them 
.to victory. He affects a scrupulous love of truth, and 
yet gravely tells his men that if they be killed for the 
" orthodox faith" they will rise again after three days 

in their native villages. He But enough. 

The Emperor Nicholas is, Eussians tell us, the very 
model of a Czar ; and Prince Menschikoff of a great 
Eussian State dignitary. Prince GortsehakofF, on his 
part, may be considered as the beau ideal of a Eussian 
general. If Eussians be as proud of him as they are 
of the Czar and the statesman, they must be made of 
very different materials to the rest of humanity. For 
certain it is that in every civilised country in the wo?\ld 
such a character and career as his can excite only con- 
tempt and disgust. 



100 



IX. 

COUNT OKLOFF* 

No aristocratic house in "all the Bussias" has ever 
stood so high in power, wealth, and imperial favour, 
as that of Orloff ; and the history of few aristocratic 
houses in all Europe, even including those of the 
greatest antiquity and the highest distinction, are more 
widely known. On the other hand, however, there is 
not to be found anywhere a family which is steeped 
in such foul infamy, or which bears a name that is so 
universally considered as the symbol of rapacity and 
crime. 

The first Orloff was a common soldier, named Orel, 
in the time of the Czar Peter, generally, but unjustly, 
called the Great. He was concerned in one of the 
plots of the Strelitz regiments, and was, with a multi- 
tude of others, condemned to death. It is known 
that Peter, like a thorough barbarian as he was, used 
to make a rule of being present at the wholesale 
executions which took place almost daily in his capital ; 
nay, that he frequently acted as executioner himself, 
and was even not a little proud of the skill with which 

* The Russians pronounce the name as if it were written Arloff. 



COUNT OULOFF. 101 

ne chopped off heads. On the day on which Orel was 
to be executed, Peter was on the scaffold, feasting his 
eyes on the quivering members of his victims ; and when 
Orel's turn came, he was standing so near the block as 
to be in the man's vfay. " Stand aside, Czar," said the 
soldier ; " you take up my place !" This rude order, 
from a person in such a situation, pleased Peter ; and 
he stopped the execution of the man. Questioning* 
him, he found that he was a rough and ready fellow, 
likely to be useful in many an emergency; and he 
offered to pardon him his past treason, and make him 
an officer, if he would promise to serve him faithfully 
and well. Orel readily gave the pledge, and he 
became an officer in one of the Czar's most trusted 
regiments. On receiving this promotion he, for some 
reason, changed his name to Orloff. At his death he 
left a son, w T ho entered the army, and rose to the rank 
of general. The General had five sons, two of whom, 
Gregory and Alexis, were monstrous criminals. The 
former was the lover of the infamous Catherine II., 
grandmother of the Emperor Nicholas : he planned the 
murder of her unfortunate husband, Peter III., the 
Emperor's putative grandfather ; and took an active 
part in effecting the revolution which placed supreme 
power in her hands. As her paramour, he obtained 
immense influence in Russia, and exercised it with 



102 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

scandalous insolence ; he secured all the titles and 
honours she could confer ; he pillaged the treasury as 
much as he pleased; and received besides a pension 
of 150,000 roubles, immense estates, and not fewer 
than 14,000 peasants ; he had a marble palace built 
for him, and a triumphal arch erected in his honour. 
The vile woman even went the length of offering to 
marry him ; but he had the audacity to refuse her 
hand, because, for state reasons, she wished the mar- 
riage kept secret, and could not think of allowing him 
to share her throne ; and, to crown all, she seriously 
contemplated making him sovereign of an independent 
kingdom on the Caspian Sea, or even of Greece. As 
to Alexis, he not only joined his brother in planning, 
but took the principal part in executing, the murder 
of the third Peter. With his own hand he poured 
poison into the sovereign's drink, as he sate in unsus- 
pecting confidence at table. The unfortunate prince, 
feeling his entrails racked and burning, heaped impre- 
cations on the head of his murderer, and called aloud 
to his domestics for an antidote. But the assassin 
laughed scornfully ; and, throwing him to the ground, 
he, with the aid of two accomplices, strangled him with 
a napkin. This foul murder, however, sat lightly on 
his conscience; and he gladly accepted honours, and 
money, and estates, as the reward of it; nay, more, 



COUNT ORLOFF. 103 

years after, he actually had the frightful hypocrisy to 
officiate as pall-bearer at the solemn interment of the 
remains of the imperial victim. The other three 
brothers of these two atrocious wretches presented 
nothing remarkable, except that, by their means and 
under their protection, they were enabled to pillage the 
state in the most scandalous way, and died gorged with 
booty. One of them was named Vladimir, and he left 
three illegitimate children. 

The sole survivor of Vladimir's illegitimate offspring 
is the person of whom we have to speak. He was 
born in 1787. The name of his mother is not re- 
corded, but she is understood to have been a serf. 
His father, feeling affection for his children, in spite of 
their disgraceful birth, and being anxious to perpetuate 
*the name of Orloff, in spite of the ignominy attached 
to it (neither his brothers nor himself had any lawful 
descendants likely to live, nor is there one now remain- 
ing), caused Catherine to decree that they should bear 
his name, and be entitled to inherit his property. 

Thus it was that Alexis became Alexis Orloff ; and 

thus it was that, instead of being destined to pass his 
life in abject slavery as a serf, he was thrown into the 
ranks of the aristocracy. But though Catherine gave 
him the murderer's name, she did not think right to 
give him the murderer's title ; and so he was plain 



104 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

Alexis Orloff, and nothing more. Having entered the 
army, he obscurely worked his way through the 
different grades up to the rank of colonel. As colonel, 
he happened to be in garrison with his regiment in St. 
Petersburgh at the latter end of 1825, when the 
Emperor Alexander died. When the death of this 
monarch became known, a formidable conspiracy, which 
had been long hatching, broke out, it will be remem- 
bered, in the capital, to prevent Nicholas from ascending 
the throne. Several regiments rose in open revolt; 
and Nicholas, with a blanched face and a beating 
heart, for he was sore afraid, had to leave his palace, 
to attempt to reduce them to submission. He harangued 
them as best he could, but they were deaf to his voice. 
A few moments after, Orloff, at the head of his regi- 
ment, came scampering up, and, without hesitation, 
charged the insurgents. This energy rather terrified 
them ; and, whilst they were hesitating, General Ben- 
kendorff arrived with a large force of artillery, and 
began blazing away at them. In a short time the 
rioters were routed or slain, and Nicholas was 
triumphant. Either from gratitude for Orloff s services 
on that most eventful day, or from Orloff having, as 
some people suspect, so manoeuvred his regiment as to 
prevent it being remarked that Nicholas, having lost 
his wits on finding that the insurgents assumed at first 



COUNT ORLOFF. 105 

a bolder attitude than he had expected, had taken to 
flight in disgraceful cowardice, instead of standing, like 
a sovereign and a man, the hazard of the die on which 
he had cast his life; or, as others suspect, from his 
having obtained, either as an accomplice or by 
treachery, a perfect knowledge of all the details of the 
plot, and having revealed them to the Czar, though 
they placed in danger the lives of some of his friends, 
and even of his own brother — either from one or other 
of these circumstances, or it may be from all combined, 
Nicholas took Orloff into his august favour. Intimate 
acquaintance with the man increased the Czar's liking 
for him ; and in course of time he came to be his 
Emperor's closest and dearest friend — a position he 
holds to this day. The favour of a despot is the 
stepping-stone to fortune ; and, accordingly, Alexis 
Orloff was created, in spite of the stain on his birth, 
a Count, a Member of the Council of the Empire, a 
General Commander of a division of the guard, an 
imperial aide-de-camp, and General-in-Chief of the 
gendarmerie — one of the highest offices in the realm, 
as it carries with it the management of the police, and 
the special protection of the Emperor's person. He 
was also nominated knight of Order after Order ; and 
more foreign decorations were procured for him than 
lie would find it convenient to carry on his breast. 



106 THE MEN OF THE WAR, 

Money, of course, was made to flow in abundantly on 
him; and he was enabled to add wide domains and 
thousands of serfs to his possessions. 

It is but strict justice to say that this lucky parvenu 
is admirably qualified for the exalted station to which 
he has risen. He is possessed of great political sagacity, 
is singularly wary and foreseeing. As a counsellor, 
indeed, none in all Eussia is wiser ; and to wisdom in 
council he adds, when necessary, energy and prudence 
in action. He appears really to feel as much affection 
for the Emperor as the Emperor entertains for him ; at 
all events, not even his bitterest enemies, and they are 
many and powerful, have ever ventured to cast the 
slightest imputation on his fidelity to his Imperial 
master. 

Blind obedience to the orders of the Czar is 
considered a public virtue by the Russians ; and the 
courtier portion of the aristocracy carry it to the 
extent of cringing servility. But in this respect Count 
Orloff outdoes everybody. An order from the Czar 
is to him as sacred as the voice in Sinai was to Moses ; 
and he executes it to the best of his ability, with 
unhesitating and unshrinking devoteclness. If the Czar 
were to tell him to thrust his hand into the fire, he 
would do it ; and would, with all the heroic fortitude 
of a Mutius Sceevola, hold it there until consumed ; or 



COUNT ORLOFF. 107 

if told to swim out into the Gulf of Finland and try 
to bring in Napier's fleet, lie would no more hesitate 
in obeying than Gulliver did in seizing the fleet of the 
Lilliputians. 

Convinced of his love and devotedness, the Czar is 
always anxious to have him near his person. In 
ordinary times he is almost a constant inmate of the 
imperial family circle ; and he accompanies the Czar in 
the long journeys which he from time to time takes to 
distant parts of the empire. In all the critical moments 
of the Czar's life, he has been by his side. We have 
seen what he did in 1825. In the revolt caused at St. 
Petersburgh by the cholera in 1831 he was with his 
Majesty ; he accompanied him when, some time after, 
he went to quell a revolt in the military colonies ; he 
rescued him from drowning in the Niemen in 1846, 
when the ice broke beneath his carriage, and he was in 
imminent danger; he was with him in his visit to 
London and Eome ; and as his talent is, as we have 
intimated, equal to his fidelity, he is constantly em- 
ployed by the Emperor in negotiations which require 
more than ordinary tact or skill, or which, from any 
reason whatsoever, it is not considered advisable to 
place in the hands of the regular diplomatists. In 
1829 it was he who negotiated the treaty of peace with 
Turkey, which wis so advantageous to Russia ; it was 



108 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

he who represented Kussia in the long and arduous 
negotiations which ended in the separation of Belgium 
from Holland; it was he who was charged with her 
interests at Constantinople in 1833, when Mehemet Ali 
was menacing the empire of the Sultan ; it was he 
who wrung from the unfortunate Turks the famous 
treaty of Unkiar-Skelesi, one of the greatest diplomatic 
exploits on record ; and since then there has not been 
a single European question pending in which Kussia 
was concerned, which he has not influenced with his 
counsels or expedited by his exertions. In the for- 
midable Eastern Question, which has lighted up the 
flames of war, he has played a most active part. All 
the confidential missions to which, from first to last, it 
has given rise — and they have been not a few — have 
been confided to him ; and it is to his masterly manage- 
ment that the Czar is indebted for the lukewarm 
adherence of Austria to the "Western Powers, and for 
the absolute neutrality of Prussia. It is fair to him 
to state that it is believed that in this great matter he 
has taken a totally opposite view to that of his master ; 
and that whilst serving his policy with zeal, he has not 
disguised from him that he considers it dangerous to 
the empire. 

Prom what has been said, it will be assumed that 
Count Qrloff is one of the happiest and most envied 



COUNT ORLOFF. 109 

men in Eussia. He is, on the contrary, one of the 
most wretched, and the most despised. He bears the 
horrible nickname of the "Poisoner!" and people 
shrink from him with horror, as from a murderer. 
Public opinion, in fact, boldly and emphatically accuses 
him of having poisoned Marshal Diebitsch, who com- 
manded the Eussian army in Poland in 1831, and of 
having at about the same time poisoned the Grand 
Duke Constantine, the Czar's brother. Diebitsch, it 
seems — so runs the tale — irritated the Czar by not 
being able to crush the Polish revolution so soon as he 
had promised ; and as it was for some peculiar reasons 
considered inexpedient to remove him from his com- 
mand, Orloff was — so goes the tale— sent to dispose of 
him. OrlofF reached the camp, dined with Diebitsch. 
Almost immediately after, the old General was seized 
with frightful sufferings, and in a short time died. 
Orloff swore that he must have perished of cholera; 
but the army and the population vowed it was of 
poison. 

From Diebitsch's camp the Count went — still so 
runs the tale — on a mission from the Czar to the 
Grand Duke Constantine. He was admitted to the 
Prince's table ; and shortly after his Imperial Highness, 
who had previously been in excellent health, died. "It 
is cholera that ha.s killed him!" said Orloff, but the 



110 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

public voice again cried " Poison !" Other assassinations 
but of victims of inferior degree, are openly laid to his 
charge ; indeed, it is a common whisper in Russia that 
when he is sent to make a communication to, or in- 
quiries respecting, any great personage, a death from 
poison is at hand. 

Now God forbid that we should take on our- 
selves to say that these awful accusations are well 
founded ; nay, we frankly admit that they do not, so 
far as can be made out, appear to rest on any- 
thing like What would be considered in an English 
court of justice clear, and explicit, and unanswerable 
evidence. But is it not strange that they should have 
sprung up without any real cause ? that they should 
have been believed for years in Russia and Poland 
by people of every degree — that they should be gene- 
rally credited in Germany, have been echoed by some 
of the most eminent writers in Prance ; and have 
caused the author of a very remarkable English book, 
published some years ago, under the title of "Revela- 
tions of Russia/' to relate as an authentic anecdote, that 
once, when the Count was dining at the table of some 
great personage, he was told by one of the guests, 
" Pour out no water for me ! It may be aqua iofana ! ,f 
a remark which made him pale as death. Is it not 
strange, passing strange, we say, that all this should be 



VICE-ADMIRAL PARSEVAL DESCHENES. Ill 

the case, and yet that neither the Count nor any of his 
friends, nor his Imperial master (who, by the way, 
can hardly be considered innocent if he be guilty) 
should have taken the trouble to prove that it is a 
base and odious calumny to designate him as " the 
Poisoner f 



x. 

VICE -ADMIRAL PARSEVAL DESCHENES. 

The name just written is as certain as that of any 
contemporary of obtaining an honoured niche in his- 
tory. Not that it belongs to a man who has already 
distinguished himself by transcendently brilliant ex- 
ploits, or even by clear indications that he pre-eminently 
possesses the great and varied qualities which constitute 
the sea-hero ; but because it is that of the first French 
naval commander who has seriously commenced, side 
by side with the English, the mighty war undertaken 
by his nation and ours for the chastisement of Russian 
insolence, and the protection of the weaker states of 
Europe against Russian wrong. We say the first ; for 
though the bombardment of Oessa took place long 
ago, it was too incompletely done, and too feebly 
resisted, to count as the real commencement of the 



112 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

war. Yes, the brilliant attack on, and capture of, the 
forts of Bomarsund, which, to the delight of Western 
Europe, have just been effected, will be recorded by- 
history as the first deadly blow struck by the two 
allied powers on Eussia ; and as such, history will say 
of it, " There began the downfall of the Czar's Empire, 
and there Parseval and Napier commanded!" 

When a man jumps, so to speak, all at once into 
immortality, people generally are inclined to suppose 
that his career, if not preceded by such dire portents 
as announced that of Grlendower — 

The front of heaven quite full of fiery shapes, 
Of burning crescents 

is at least distinguished in some marked manner, or by 
some extraordinary events, from that of other men. 
In the case of Admiral Parseval, however, an expec- 
tation of the kind, if entertained, will be disappointed ; 
his naval career, barring, perhaps, the debut of it, not 
differing in any material respect from that of any other 
officer, whether English or French, of the same rank 
and the same length of services. 

His debut as a sailor was certainly a remarkable one. 
A lad of only fourteen or fifteen, he " assisted" at the 
greatest and most glorious battle the sea has ever 
witnessed. He was on board the Bucentaure at 
Trafalgar. That vessel, it will be remembered, fought 



VICE-ADMlRAL PAE&EVAL DESClIENSS. 113 

with the most heroic bravery. Nelson himself, in the 
Victory, assailed her with his usual terrific impetuosity. 
A little later, three huge line-of-battle ships thundered 
at her at once. She was ever, in a word, in the very 
thickest of the appalling fight. The poor lad, there- 
fore, saw- — 

"Each gun, 

From its adamantine lips, 

Spread a death-shade round the ships, 

Like the hurricane eclipse 

Of the sun !" 

He saw, too, the tail gaunt figure of England's hero — a 
figure which every French eye that was near enough 
had gazed at with mingled awe and hate; he saw 
it suddenly stricken down. And then, with blanched 
cheeks and bated breath, yet beaming eye, ho cried, 
" He falls !" and in a moment afteir, with the rapidity 
of lightning, the news that he had fallen had reached 
every combatant in the Bueentaure. There was a 
moment's pause ; and then a gleam of infernal satis- 
faction lighted every eye ; and then the work of 
carnage was resumed with greater ferocity than before. 
But the day was won by the stricken hero ; and " the 
flag that's braved a thousand years the battle and the 
breeze," had to inscribe a new victory on its glorious 
folds. 

Young Parsoval was afterwards present, in the 
8 



114 THE MEN OP THE WAR. 

capacity of midshipman, in an engagement near Sables 
d'Olonne, in 1809, in which the French claim the 
honour of having, with three frigates, beaten off three 
line-of-battle ships under Admiral Stopford. He was 
present also in the affairs, at a later period, in the 
Scheldt, in which neither the British troops nor the 
British fleets displayed their usual skill and bravery. 
He likewise, about this time, signalised himself by slip- 
ping through an English blockade with a frigate, and 
carrying her to a French port. After the peace, he 
was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, and was 
charged with certain small missions on the Barbary 
coast, on the Brazilian coast, in the West Indies, also 
for a time with the governorship of French Guiana. 
In the course of the;se duties he was twice shipwrecked, 
and in great danger. When in 1823-4 his Government 
intervened in Spain, in order to crush the Spanish 
liberals and defend the throne of Ferdinand, he was 
in the naval expedition which was sent against Barce- 
lona, and did such good service that his Admiral 
reported most favourably of him, and the Cross of the 
Legion of Honour was granted to him. Before 1830 
he was promoted to a captaincy, and he went out in 
command of the frigate the Euryale, in the expedition 
against Algiers. He there did duty well. In 1833 
he distinguished himself at the siege of Bougia. Next 



VICE-ADMIRAL PARSEVAL DESGTIENES. 115 

we find him commanding a frigate in a blockade 
which the French Government had established at 
Buenos- Ayres, and assisting in capturing an island 
near the mouth of La Plata. Somewhat later he 
commanded the frigate Iphigenie, of sixty guns, in 
the fleet sent out under the brave Admiral Baudin 
to chastise the Mexican Government for some real or 
imaginary wrongs to France. On this occasion he took 
part in the destruction and capture of the fortress of 
San Juan de Ulloa. This affair is one of the most 
brilliant the French navy can boast of ; and is, next 
to the bombardment of Acre by Napier, the most 
striking proof that exists that ships can take fortresses 
— that wooden walls have no need to fear stone ones. 
The French knocked Ulloa about most awfully; and 
no wonder, for they battered it with nearly five hundred 
shells, and upwards of seven thousand cannon-balls. 
Captain Parse val afterwards took the leading part in 
capturing the forts and garrison of Vera Cruz — a very 
dashing exploit. For this the Admiral specially com- 
plimented him in his report to the Government. 
Afterwards M. Parseval was not again employed afloat 
until May of the present year, when he was sent out 
in command of the Baltic fleet. But on land he has 
constantly held important offices in connexion with the 
navy. Thus he has been Maritime Prcfet at Cher- 



116 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

bourg, Member of the Naval Board of Works, Maritime 
Prefet at Toulon, and Inspector-General of Sailers 
in the ports of Brest, Lorient, and Cherbourg. His 
standing as Yicc- Admiral is from 1846, so that he is 
Napier's senior ; and in 1844 he was, for his services 
afloat and ashore, nominated Grand Officer of the 
Legion of Honour. 

From this brief recapitulation it will be seen that we 
were correct in stating that though he began his career 
in a way which few officers now living can boast of, 
that career by no means presents anything extra- 
ordinary. It, however, prevents us from doing other- 
wise than concluding that he is a most excellent 
officer — brave as a lion in combat, but prudent withal ; 
a capital seaman, and as well versed as any man in all 
the details of his profession. And this is his repu- 
tation in the French navy. Add to it that he is a 
" good fellow'*' in the fullest sense of the term — sociable, 
gay, likeable, full of anecdote and fun ; that he has a 
prodigious memory for ail the details of battles and 
nautical matters; that he is ready to help on young 
officers as much as he can, and to give his subordinates 
the opportunity of distinguishing themselves ; that he 
possesses the quality, rather rare in France, especially 
amongst Governmental functionaries, of spending both 
his pay and his private revenue freely; add, too, that 



VICE-ADMIRAL PARSEVAL DESCI1ENES, 117 

in person he is tall and gentlemanlike, and, though no 
chicken in years, vigorous as a man half his age ; 
add, again, that, like a thorough Frenchman, he is 
very fond indeed of issuing flaming orders of the 
day and addresses to his fleet, brimful of the u glory 
of France," the " flag of France/' the " sword of 
France," "the generosity of France," and the "trembling 
of the enemies of France before her uplifted arm ;" 
add all these things to the record of his services, and 
you will have present to your mind's eye, as near as 
can be, the man who, as Commander of the French 
Baltic fleet, has just helped to give the Eussians a 
tremendous thrashing at Bomarsund, and who, no 
doubt, will not be content until he shall have added 
to his renown by assisting Napier to knock Cronstadt 
and Sweaborg about their ears, and to make a bonfire 
of their fleets. 



V 



118 



XI. 

VICE-ADMIRAL HAMELIN. 

Whatever may be the result of the Eastern war — 
the glory of England and Eranee or their everlasting 
disgrace — it will give great celebrity to some few men, 
who, without it, would in all probability have been 
condemned to live and die in the most profound 
obscurity. Of these men the French thus far possess 
the greatest number. Who, a short time ago, ever 
heard of Admiral Hamelin ? Who is there in the 
whole civilised world who does not know his name 
now ? 

At the latter end of the last century, and the first 
few years of the present, there flourished a certain 
Baron Hamelin, who, after being a skipper in the 
merchant service, entered the navy, and rose to the 
rank of Vice-Admiral. It is written in the naval 
chronicles of France that the Baron was a perfect 
hero; inasmuch as, after figuring with "glory" in the 
terrible battle off Brest, in 1793, where the French 
were completely defeated, and in resisting the attacks 
of the English on the flotilla collected by Napoleon at 
Boulogne, he captured, with a small brig called the 
Victor, an English frigate of forty guns, called the 



VICE-ADMIRAL HAMELIN. 119 

Ceylon; afterwards, when in command of a frigate, 
succeeded, with the assistance of another frigate, in 
vanquishing four English frigates at the Mauritius ; 
afterwards, with a small brig, gallantly fought several 
-English vessels, some of them line-of-battle ships, and 
obtained great glory ; and afterwards did other extra- 
ordinary exploits. This heroic Baron had a nephew, 
named Alphonse, whom he destined for the sea. To 
make him practically acquainted with nautical duties, 
the bold Baron compelled him to commence service in 
the lowly position of cabin-boy in his own vessel ; 
and as cabin-boy the lad " assisted" at his defeat of the 
four frigates, and at the capture of the Ceylon. But 
though obliged to wash decks, clean shoes, wait at 
table, and do other menial offices, opportunities of 
studying the scientific part of his profession were 
afforded the boy ; and in due time he was promoted to 
the rank of midshipman. This was in 1812, and in 
1813 he became a lieutenant. The war, by sea at all 
events, was now drawing to a close, and it was vain for 
the young man to hope for distinction. But, never- 
theless, he figured creditably in the operations of the 
Erench flotilla near Antwerp. When, in 1823, the 
Bourbon Government marched an army into Spain, to 
support the tottering throne of King Ecrdinand, 
Lieutenant Hamelin was appointed to one of the vessels 



120 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

which was sent to cruise off the coast; and he dis- 
played such zeal and activity at Cadiz, that his superior 
officers reported highly of him, and the Spanish 
sovereign conferred on him the cross of one of his 
orders. Three or four years after, he was placed in 
command of a corvette, which was charged to chastise 
the Alger ine pirates, who, with great audacity, had 
pillaged a number of French vessels belonging to 
Marseilles. The command was one of considerable 
difficulty, as the pirates were very numerous, very 
skilful, and accustomed to fight with the most desperate 
bravery. The lieutenant, however, went to work in 
a thorough sailor-like fashion ; and in the course of a 
short time was able to report that he had "taken, 
burned, or destroyed," several of their vessels, had 
hanged a number of their crews, and had despatched 
several score of prisoners into France. In fact, it may 
be said that, for a time, he altogether cleared the 
Algerian coasts of pirates. For this eminent service, 
the Chamber of Commerce of Marseilles gave him a 
vote of thanks, and his Government promoted him to 
the rank of captain of a frigate. Before long, the 
command of the frigate La Favorite was confided to 
him, and he was sent to cruise off the coast of Brazil. 
There he was assailed by one of the most terrible 
enemies sailors have to encounter — an enemy which 



VI CE - AD MIR AL HAMELIK. 121 

disables without the excitement of combat, and kills 
scores at a time without glory : the yellow fever broke 
out in his ship, and remained in it for weeks. All that 
man could do he did; but the fell visitant was too 
strong for him, and day after day it struck down his 
brave fellows, one after the other. There is an end 
to all things, however, and it spent its rage at last ; 
and then the captain, to his dismay, found that nearly 
one-half of the crew had perished, and that the rest 
were disabled and demoralised. He himself was seized 
by it, and for a long and weary time it kept him in a 
constant struggle with death. The report which he 
sent home gave such a touching account of the suffer- 
ings and losses occasioned by the frightful malady, 
that it drew tears from almost every e}^e ; and has ever 
since been carefully preserved in the Ministry of 
Marine, as a striking proof that it is not in the tempest 
and the battle alone that the good sailor can gain 
distinction. When, in 1830, the French expedition 
against Algiers was resolved on, Captain Hamelin ex- 
pected, as a matter of course, to be appointed to the 
command of a ship-of-the-line, or of a frigate; but he 
was entirely overlooked. Thereupon he wrote a brief 
but spirited letter to the Admiralty. "I am only 
thirty-three years of age/' said he, " and yet I have 
been kept several months on shore, and now nothing 



122 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

is given to me ! I demand the command of a gun-boat 
in the expedition about to sail. My rank entitles me 
to something better ; but give me that, or anything — 
I care not what, so that I be where fighting is I" The 
letter pleased — he was appointed to a corvette ; and in 
that he did all that could be done with so small a 
vessel. This, however, was the last occasion on which, 
as captain, he saw a shot fired in real earnest. Nor 
were the other commands intrusted to him of any great 
importance, either in a professional or political point 
of view; the principal was that of the naval station 
in the Sandwich Islands, where he was specially charged 
to see to the execution of a treaty entered into by the 
King of those Islands with France. He, however, 
obtained, in succession, some places ashore — such as 
Major- General of Marines, Member of the Council of 
the Polytechnic School, Inspector-General of the Navy, 
Member of the Board of Admiralty, and the Maritime 
Prefecture of Toulon. His promotion to the rank of 
Vice-Admiral took place in 1842. In June of 1853 
he was nominated to the command of an evolutionary 
squadron, and a month later to that of the fleet which 
was then in Besika Bay, and is now in the Black Sea. 
In that sea, he, as all the world knows, directed the 
French part of the bombardment of Odessa. 

If it were the rule only to nominate admirals to 



VICE-ADMIRAL HAMELItf. 123 

great commands for what they have done, it is tolerably 
certain that Vice-Admiral Hamelin would not now be 
at the head of the mighty fleet which is helping to 
brave and humiliate the Czar in the Euxine ; for there 
are several officers in the French navy, of the same 
grade and standing as his, who have seen much 
severer service. Governments, however, wisely pay 
more heed to the qualities it has reason to believe 
a man possesses, than to the hard fighting he may 
have seen. Now, the professional qualities of the 
Admiral are stated by those who are entitled to ex- 
press a judgment, to be singularly great. No man of 
France, they say, can handle a fleet so cleverly ; none 
is more able as a tactician ; if many be equally brave, 
few enjoy in so great a degree what is so necessary 
to a commander — imperturbable sang froid and prompt 
decision; and, finally, none unites so completely the 
fortiter in re, which is absolutely indispensable for the 
maintenance of discipline, with the saaviter in modo, 
which wins every heart. 



124 



XII. 

THE SULTAN". 

In the year 1784, or thereabouts, a young French 
lady, named Duluc de Eivery, belonging to a highly 
respectable family of the island of Martinico, was taken 
prisoner at sea by a gang of Algerian pirates, as she 
was proceeding home from France, after completing 
her education. Conveyed to Algiers, she was purchased 
for the harem of the Dey ; but that worthy potentate, 
struck with her beauty, determined not to reserve her 
for himself, but to make a present of her to his august 
lord paramount, the Sultan. She was accordingly 
despatched by him to Constantinople, and, being ac- 
cepted, was admitted to the imperial harem. At first, 
she bitterly lamented her hard lot, but after awhile 
became reconciled to it. Having done so, she pro- 
ceeded to make the most of her beauty, and employed 
all the arts of coquetry in which, as a Frenchwoman, 
and especially as a French Creole, she was remarkably 
expert, to win the heart of the Padischah, Abdul- 
Earned. She succeeded in her design, and became the 
favourite Sultana. She subsequently bore him a son, 
who received the name of Mahmoud, and who, after 
Abdul and his two elder sons had been gathered to 



THE SULTAN. 125 

their fathers, reigned in their stead. This Mahmoud 
was the father of the present Sultan, Abdul-Medjid. 
Consequently we see that Abdul-Medjid, though a 
Turk and the King of Turks, has some little mixture 
of European blood in his veins ; and what is more 
singular is, he can claim a distant relationship with 
Napoleon III., Emperor of the French — his grand- 
mother's family having frequently intermarried with the 
families of the Taschers de la Pagerie and the Beau- 
harnais of Martinico, from both of whom his Imperial 
Majesty is maternally descended. 

Mdlle. Duluc de Hi very, on becoming the mother 
of a future Sultan, had him educated, as far as possible, 
according to European notions ; and the consequence 
was, that he became so smitten with everything European 
that, from the time he attained years of discretion until 
his death, he employed all his efforts to reform the 
institutions and the manners of his people, according 
to the European model. Naturally, he had his son 
carefully brought up in his reforming principles ; and 
the boy's mother, on her part — a woman of greater 
intelligence than is often to be met with within the 
walls of the harem — took great pains to secure him a 
liberal and enlightened education. Abdul-Medjid is, 
therefore, with the sole exception of his father, the least 
prejudiced — that is, the least intensely Turkish — of any 



126 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

Sultan who has ever sat on the thrones of Osman and 
Mahomet. 

It was in 1839 that, on the death of his father 
Mahmoucl, Abdul-Medjid, then only about sixteen years 
of age, assumed, with the imperial sceptre, the high- 
sounding titles of " By the infinite grace of the great, 
just, and all-powerful Creator, and the abundance of 
the miracles of the chief of his Prophets, Emperor of 
Powerful Emperors ; Refuge of Sovereigns ; Distributor 
of crowns to the kings of the earth ; Keeper of the two 
most holy cities of Mecca and Medina ; Governor 
of the Holy City of Jerusalem ; Master of Europe, 
Asia, and Africa, conquered with our victorious sword 
and our terrible lance ; Lord of Two Seas ; of Damas- 
cus, the odour of Paradise ; of Bagdad, the seat of the 
Caliphs ; of the fortresses of Belgrade, Agra, and a 
multitude of countries, isles, straits, peoples and gene- 
rations, and of many victorious armies who repose 
under the shadow of our Sublime Porte ; and, lastly, 
the Shadow of God upon earth!" Coming to the 
throne of such an empire as that of Turkey — an empire 
which had long been torn and distracted by the revolts 
of powerful pachas — which had long waged w 7 ar against 
one of its great vassals, and had waged it in vain — 
which presented everywhere the signs of internal 
decomposition — which was bankrupt in treasury — which 



THE SULTAN. 127 

was hated and despised by all Europe — which great 
writers like Lamartine declared could not last. - ■ Tur- 
key," said he, " hangs on the life of Mahmoud ; the 
empire and he will perish on the same day !" and 
which the wisest statesmen of Europe thought was 
without any vitality whatever — coming to such an em- 
pire as this, the boy-Padischah would, one would have 
thought, have felt something very like dismay, inasmuch 
as, cursed with the possession of power the most 
absolute and tremendous that is wielded by any one 
man — the power of sovereignty over an immense terri- 
tory — of life and death over millions of subjects— he 
was called upon to save the state by any and every 
means ; and was certain to receive the maledictions 
of his people, the blame of the whole world, and the 
never-dying scorn of history, if he should allow it to 
perish in his hands. " But what is written is written," 
said he ; " if Allah wills that Turkey shall unhappily foil 
in my reign, fall she must ; if Allah wills that she shall 
live, live she will ! For me, my duty is clear — to do 
my utmost to preserve her." And so saying, he calmly, 
but without any of the presumptuous confidence of 
youth, entered on the discharge of his high and awful 
duties. 

Fifteen years have since passed away, and much less 
than fifteen years are sufficient to enable one to judge 



128 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

a man, especially when lie is placed in an exalted 
station. On the whole, the verdict to be passed on 
Ahdul-Mecijid's career is not an unfavourable one. 
Not that he is to be compared in any respect with 
Gsman, Amurath, Bajazet, Soliman, or other of his 
renowned ancestors ; but because, in the critical situa- 
tion in which the empire came to him, he has done all 
that was humanly possible for him to do. Thus he 
began his reign by declaring himself a zealous partisan 
of reform ; and, to prove the sincerity of his declara- 
tion, he appeared at the solemn ceremony of investiture 
with the sword of the Commander of the Faithful, not 
in the traditional turban, but in the revolutionary fez, 
an audacious innovation, which almost drove the 
Clieikh-ui-Islam, chief of the religion, mad. Subse- 
quently he promulgated the famous hatti-seheriff of 
G ulhane, by which he promised certain sweeping re- 
forms, such as the security of life, honour, and property, 
a regular mode of levying the taxes, the regularisation 
of the military levies, the improvement of the adminis- 
tration of justice, protection to Christians, and other 
measures, which, though they seem almost matters of 
course in European eyes, were unheard-of monstrosities 
to the rabid old Turks. Since then he has endeavoured 
faithfully to carry these ameliorations into effect, so far 
as circumstances have permitted. He has ; besides, 



THE SULTAN. 129 

steadily encouraged such of his counsellors — Rescind 
Pasha, for example- — as seem to care more, or at least 
as much, for the welfare of the country as for their own 
personal interests ; has reorganised national education ; 
purified the administration ; allowed the testimony of 
Christians to be given on oath, according to the forms 
they prefer, before the legal tribunals ; checked the 
rapacity of pachas ; decreed that no sentence of death 
shall be executed without his sanction ; and made some 
generous concessions to his Christian subjects. More- 
over, it will not be forgotten that in 1850 he firmly 
refused to obey the command of Austria and Russia 
to give up the Hungarian and Polish refugees who had 
sought shelter in his dominions ; and, though they 
insolently threatened to make war on him for so doing, 
would not yield to them an inch. His conduct, too, 
during the long and harassing negotiations with Russia 
was, on the whole, highly becoming — dignified without 
arrogance, and, though displaying a peremptory deter- 
mination to defend his rights, keeping the door con- 
stantly open to conciliation. It must be added, too, 
that he has entirely done away with the barbarous and 
horrible custom, adhered to even by his father, of 
causing disgraced Ministers to be put to death. 

The Sultan is very jealous of his authority : he not 
only takes pleasure in making persons who seem clis- 
9 



130 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

posed to question or disrespect it feel its power with 
some severity, but by his personal bearing, and 
sometimes by very decided acts, he reminds his Minis- 
ters, even those who possess his highest confidence, that 
he is "monarch of all he surveys." This extreme 
jealousy of his authority makes him, however, very 
anxious to do justice between man and man; and 
when any appeal is addressed direct to him, it is certain, 
whatever be the rank of the appellants, or of either 
of them, that his decision will be marked, if not with 
Solomon's wisdom, at least with his impartiality. As 
a specimen of his mode of administering justice, this 
anecdote may be related : — Once upon a time a trades- 
man of Bebek was converted by Protestant missionaries 
from the Greek religion, in which he had been brought 
up, to the purer faith of Protestantism. The Greek 
priests were scandalised at his defection, and employed 
persuasion, flattery, and even threats, to induce him 
to return to their Church. But all was vain : the 
truth had taken too deep a hold of his heart. Exas- 
perated, the priests, headed by their bishop, excited a 
fanatical mob of Greeks to burn down his house : and 
with it perished all his worldly goods. The poor man 
hastened to the Grand Yizier for redress; and the 
Grand Vizier, afraid to meddle with the Greeks, caused 
him to be presented to the Sultan. " I am told," said 



THE SULTAN. 131 

Abdul-Medjid, when the man appeared in his dread 
presence, " that a mob of Greek Christians have burned 
down your house. That is wrong, very wrong ; but 
no doubt you offended them by committing some 
crime." " O Highness ! I committed no crime ! I 
merely abandoned their faith !" " What is their faith ¥ 
"That which places salvation in the Panagia, and 
requires men to adore her !" " The Panagia ! What, 
that yellow painted thing which they stick up in their 
churches V " The same, Highness ! and I abandoned 
the worship of the image to adore the true God, as 
revealed by Jesus Christ !" " You did right. There 
is but one God, but Mahomet is his Prophet !" The 
Sultan then inquired into the details of his losses, 
and dismissed him. A few days after the Greek Bishop 
of the district in which the outrage had been com- 
mitted was summoned before the Sultan. Quaking 
with fear, the reverend man went, and before he could 
make the customary salutations, the Sultan, apparently 
in great anger, thundered out, " What do your people 
mean by burning down the house of one of my sub- 
jects ? A.m I not called the Just Sultan ? and as such, 
do I not owe protection to all ? Dare you despise my 
power?" The Patriarch attempted to stammer out 
some excuse. " Silence !" cried Abdul-Medjid, " I know 
all that took place. Now listen: I myself persecute 



132 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

no man on account of his religion, and I will not allow 
any one else to do such a thing. God is great, and 
God is for us all ; but your conduct is worse than 
that of swine ! This man puts confidence in God in 
heaven ; but on earth he reposes under the protection 
of our shadow, and I declare that he shall not be 
despoiled ! He must be indemnified for the wrong he 
has sustained. And listen I as- I ought to have pro- 
tected him, it is I who will indemnify him V The 
Patriarch was greatly relieved to be let off on such 
easy terms. " O Sultan I" cried he humbly, " thou art 
the source of consolation, and the flower of justice, and 
thou canst do no wrong!" "True, quite true. But 
as my subjects, who are true believers, would have 
just cause to complain if I imposed on them a burden 
to make reparation for a wrong done by unbelieving 
dogs, you must pay me !" The Patriarch was thunder- 
struck, and attempted a remonstrance. " Silence ! 
cried Abdul. " The man estimates his loss at 800,000 
piastres (about 8000?.) ; but as in the confusion he may 
have omitted some part of Ins ruined stock, I have 
determined that he shall receive 1,200,000 piastres. 
That sum I will pay, to prove to him that it is not 
in vain that he reposes under the protection of the green 
banner; but that sum you shall repay me within one 
week from this day, or you shall take the consequences ! 



THE SULTAN. 133 

You must collect it from your unbelieving dogs as best 
you may V " Oh, Sultan, mercy ! I can never pay so 
large a sum !" " Enough, dog ! Go !" 

What we have said will suffice to prove what is the 
truth, that Abdul-Medjid is possessed of many high 
qualities, and that he is not without statesmanlike talent 
and energy. But he is morally an unhappy man, and 
physically little more than a wreck. He is unhappy 
because he has drained the cup of earthly pleasure to 
the very dregs, and is jaded, sated, disgusted. Nothing 
pleases him now, nothing excites him ; he has nothing 
to wish for. Life to him is a dreary and a miserable 
blank. Although still in the very early prime of man- 
hood, his constitution is completely broken. His cheeks 
are pale and immovable as those of the dead ; his 
eyes, dark and brilliant, are fixed as if they see not, 
and as if there were nought on earth they care to see ; 
his frame is emaciated, and it is with difficulty that he 
can walk unsupported. In one word, he is an august 
victim of that vile and frightful institution of his 
country — Polygamy. 



134 



XIII. 

OMAR PACHA. 

Of the w birth, parentage, education/* and career 
of this eminent personage many accounts have been 
published,, but no two of them agree between them- 
selves ; and whilst some exalt him into a perfect hero 
of romance, others represent him as a vulgar and not 
very creditable adventurer. Perhaps,, then, the plain, 
unadorned truth about him may be acceptable. 

In the village of Plasky, near Pienne, on the military 
frontiers of Austria, there lived, at the beginning of the 
present century, two brothers named Lattas, one a 
priest of the Greek Church, the other a " lieutenant of 
administration" under the Austrian Government — that 
is, an officer with the rank of lieutenant, but employed 
as clerk in the military office of the district. This 
quill-driving soldier had several children, and he 
brought them up as best he could on his scanty pay. 
One of these children, Michael, a sharp lad, was sent 
to the school of Plasky to pick up the rudiments of 
education ; and from thence was removed to a superior 
establishment at Thurme, near Carlstadt. At Plasky 
the boy was noted for a remarkably fine handwriting ; 
and at Thurme for the rapidity with which he acquired 



OMAR PACHA. 135 

a competent knowledge of mathematics. At sixteen, 
or thereabouts, his father, thinking that so good a pen- 
man and calculator was destined for a bureaucratic life, 
got him a clerkship in the office of Bridges and Koads, 
and there he remained for some time. But the pros- 
pect of passing the whole of his life in filling reams 
of foolscap with writing, and adding up huge columns 
of figures, made him sick at heart, and he repeatedly 
neglected his duties. For this he was as repeatedly 
rebuked by his superiors ; and the rebukes galled him 
greatly. At length his connexion with the department 
of bridges and roads was brought to a somewhat abrupt 
conclusion, either by his being discharged, or by his 
discharging himself, it is not exactly known which ; 
there is no doubt, however, that his superiors were as 
glad to get rid of him as he was to get rid of them. 
He next got some situation at Zara, which is also in 
the Austrian dominions ; but it was not to his taste, 
and he held it not long. It has been insinuated that 
his reason for leaving his two places was, that some 
irregularity was discovered in his accounts ; but this is 
a calumny ; none of the public money passed through 
his hands, and all he had to do with accounts was to 
copy them. It has been said, also, that he left the 
Austrian territory without permission ; and that as he 
was, like all other employes in those parts, one of the 



136 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

frontier corps, and under military discipline, he was a 
deserter ; but his rupture with the authorities at Zara 
left him entirely free. " The wide world being all 
before him where to choose," he wended his way to 
Turkey, which seemed to him to afford favourable 
openings to seekers after fortune. As ill-luck would 
have it, he was waylaid by bandits, and robbed. This 
reduced him to such extremity that he was obliged to 
abandon the design he had formed, of going to Con- 
stantinople to solicit military employment, and to con- 
tent himself with a humble clerkship to a Turk who 
carried on trade at Widdin. After a while, the post 
of tutor in a great family was offered him, and he 
gladly accepted it ; but the condition was laid down 
that he should change his religion. To this he made 
no great objection ; and he became a Mahometan, under 
the name of Omar — his reason for adopting the name 
being, it is said, that it was that of the first village 
that he had entered on Turkish territory. The aban- 
donment of the Christian faith for that of Mahomet 
constitutes, there is no denying, a deep stain on his 
character ; but let us not forget that he can plead, in 
extenuation, that the creed he forsook was not the 
pure and holy one taught in Protestant Churches, and 
set forth in the Word of God, but one which is dis- 
figured by the absurd inventions of scheming men, and 



OMAR PACIIA. 137 

is made the pretext for the observance of superstitious 
mummeries which shock the reason. His patron, in 
course of time, removed to Constantinople, and took 
Omar with him. In that city, Omar, who, by the way, 
had obtained a perfect knowledge of the Turkish lan- 
guage, threw himself as much as possible into the 
society of military men — he having, at heart, a strong 
hankering after the soldier's calling. Before long he 
had made himself several friends ; and by these means 
he got a place as writing-master, we believe ; but, at 
all events, as something in which his fine handwriting 
could be turned to account, in one of the military 
schools which the Sultan Mahmoud had just established. 
Here he soon contrived to attract the attention of 
Khosrew Pacha, the most influential of the reforming 
ministers of the reforming Sultan ; and Khosrew made 
him his aide-de-camp. In that capacity he quite won 
the old man's heart ; and Khosrew not only presented 
him to the Sultan, but made him writing-master to 
Abdul-Medjid, the Sultan's son, he who now sits on 
Osman's throne. Nay, more, he married him to the 
daughter of the last Aga of the slaughtered janisaries, 
an excellent match for the young man ; and Omar, 
whose fortune was now made, complied with the custom 
of the country by taking three other wives — at least, 
so it is said. Khosrew, to complete his favours, caused 



138 THE MEN OP THE WAR. 

him to be nominated to the rank of Major in the army, 
and to be attached to the staff of European officers 
who, under General Chrzanowski, were charged with 
the re-organisation of the Turkish army. After serving 
some time in this way, he was intrusted with the 
superintendence of a topographical survey in the 
Danubian Principalities and Bulgaria; and he thus 
obtained that minute and intimate acquaintance with 
these districts which has has been of such immense 
advantage to him in the existing war. At the accession 
of the present Sultan, he held the rank of Lieutenant- 
Colonel, but he soon after was promoted to a colonelcy, 
and before long to be a Major-General. Up to this 
time he had seen scarcely any active service in the 
field ; but he was now charged with the duty of quelling 
some disturbances in Syria, and he acquitted himself of 
it with great credit. He afterwards put down troubles 
in Albania and Kurdistan. In 1847, he rendered great 
service to the Sultan, by crushing a military conspiracy 
against his throne, and was rewarded by promotion to 
the rank of Lieutenant- General, accompanied by the 
title of Pacha. In 1848, when Kussia marched an army 
into the Danubian Principalities, to put down a revo- 
lutionary movement, he was sent at the head of a 
Turkish army to the same Principalities, partly to do 
the same thing, and partly to watch the Bussians. The 



OMAR PACHA. 139 

mission was one of considerable political difficulty ; but 
lie fulfilled it with great tact, and was, on his return, 
promoted to the dignity of Mushir, or Marshal. He 
subsequently exerted the influence which his position 
and talents gave him in encouraging the Turkish 
Ministers in their famous and most honourable refusal 
to give up the Turkish refugees on the bullying of 
Austria and Russia. In 1851-52 he attracted great 
attention in Western Europe, by the energetic manner 
in which he put down sanguinary insurrections in 
Montenegro and Bosnia. When the war against Russia 
commenced in 1853, his Government chose him from 
amongst all its generals to be Commander-in-Chief of 
the army on the Danube ; and certainly a more worthy 
choice could not have been made. 

A man who rises by merit from the position of a 
writing-clerk to be commander-in-chief of a mighty 
army must needs be possessed of extraordinarily great 
talents. But it would be rating Omar too lowly to 
speak of him only as a man of talent — he is a great and 
mighty military genius. Nothing short, indeed, of the 
vastest genius could have enabled him to accomplish 
the wonderful things which have gained for him the 
admiration of Europe. When he came to the head of 
the army, he found it badly disciplined, and it is now, 
with the exception of the officers, one of the finest 



I-iO THE MEN OF THE 

armies in Europe. He found it badly clothed and 
armed, and now it is, at least, tolerably well provided 
in those respects ; he found that, when it was sent into 
the field, the commissariat arrangements were most 
shamefully neglected — almost as bad, in fact, as those 
of the English army — and now they are admirable ; 
he found that scarcely any such thing as medical 
attendance for the wounded or the sick was provided, 
and now it is a well organised department : one and all 
of these improvements were effected by him, in spite of 
many obstacles and great opposition. He found, too, 
that it was the custom for the inferior officers to bo 
utterly indifferent to the welfare of the men ; but he 
made them go frequently amongst them, taste their 
food, inquire into their wants, and see that they needed 
nought that they were entitled to have, and that it 
was possible to procure ; and he himself, not wrapping 
himself up in his dignity of commander-in-chief, did 
what he preached— acted, in fact, to his soldiers as a 
father to his children. As a general-in-chief in the 
field he cannot be spoken of too highly. As a strategist, 
the greatest military authorities on the Continent — 
Prussian, Austrian, and French — think him the first of 
the day. The skilful manner in which, at the begin- 
ning of the war, he provided for the defence of a vast 
line, extending from the Austrian frontier to the Black 



OMAR PACHA. 141 

Sea ; in which he chose his main position in Little 
Wallachia ; in which he baffled Gortschakoff over and 
over again ; in which he never allowed himself to be 
duped into the abandonment of an important point by 
that bunglers feigned attacks on certain of his posi- 
tions ; in which he bamboozled him into believing that 
he was about to make a formidable onslaught on one 
point, when in reality he wanted to cross the Danube 
in others, and did cross it ; all this is, according to 
continental authorities, deserving of boundless admira- 
tion. In actual combat, his manner of attack and 
defence have covered him with glory ; the former 
impetuous without rashness, the latter energetic without 
folly. But the battles of Kalafat, Oitenitza, and a 
score other places, which are still fresh in public recol- 
lection, will suffice to tell its tale. Of military 
engineering he possesses almost as much knowledge as 
generals who confine themselves exclusively to that 
branch of war; and it is on his plans that all the 
fortresses of Turkey have been fortified, and on them 
that they have been defended. To crown his military 
I qualifications, no man knows better than he the good 
and bad qualities of the troops he commands ; and the 
skill with which in engagements he contrives to gain as 
much as possible by the former, and to suffer as little 
as possible from the latter, is truly wonderful. More* 

! 

I 



142 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

over, lie sees to everything himself ; and is, in fact, his 
own quartermaster-general, his own chief of the staff, 
his own commissary-general, his own chief physican — 
his own everything. 

Great as he is as a general, he is equally distinguished 
by the exemplary purity of his public character. It is 
the rule in Turkey for every public functionary, from 
the Grand Vizier down to the humblest hams, to rob 
the State with little scruple, and to accept bribes from 
all who offer them. But no ill-gotten wealth has ever 
found its way to Omar's purse, and no bribe has ever 
stained his hands. At present, notwithstanding his 
exalted rank, he has scarcely anything to live on except 
his pay, a thing which, perhaps, could not be said with 
truth of any other pacha. He has even made a point 
of refusing to accept places in the Ministry or foreign 
embassies, or other high offices, which have been re- 
peatedly offered to him as the means of increasing his 
pecuniary resources. 

In person Omar is rather under than above the 
middle height ; but he is well-formed, and his features 
express, in a remarkable degree, energy, candour, and 
goodnature. His eye displays great intellectual power ; 
and, though at times it is soft and gentle as woman's, it 
flashes fire like a lion's when he is roused. In bearing 
he is simple, easy, unaffected — very like a straight- 



OMAR PACHA, 143 

forward English gentleman. He dresses with great 
plainness, and eats and drinks in the European style ; 
taking wine publicly in spite of the Koran, and being 
by no means averse, au contraire, to rum and water. 
Nor is it only at table that he is a European ; for it 
must be stated that, having by death or otherwise got 
rid of the bonds which bound him to his Turkish 
dames, he long ago married a European lady (she was a 
governess in station and a Transylvanian by birth), and 
now lives with her openly in the European w T ay : she, 
in fact, accompanies him from place to place, and may 
frequently be seen riding or walking by his side when 
he is engaged in military duties. He is very hospitable 
and sociable ; and though he is bored to death by 
visitors — not a few of them conceited puppies, who 
lecture him on the best way of conducting the war — he 
is never seen to look cross, and never known to be 
rude. In addition to Turkish, he speaks German and 
Italian with great facility, and has a competent know- 
ledge of French. He has a great many foreigners, 
chiefly Germans, about him, and seems to prefer the 
Germans' society, probably because he still remembers 
that they were once his countrymen. When amongst 
people he likes, he talks a good deal, and is not reluc- 
tant to dwell on his own exploits, especially those 
which he performed in quelling the insurrection in 



144 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

Bosnia. He has read a good deal, and is possessed of 
more varied knowledge than many generals can boast 
of ; or, for that matter, many other people who have 
greater need to be learned. In ancient literature he 
seems well versed ; he takes great interest in antiquities 
of all kinds ; and is passionately fond of art. At one 
time he had constantly in his suite a German poet, and 
nothing pleased him more than to hear his deeds re- 
corded in that person's verse, though perhaps it was 
not of Byronic or Goethean quality; and now that 
he has been removed from him by death, he has replaced 
him by an artist, charged to perpetuate his battles on 
canvas. He loves music also, and delights in the per- 
formances of his wife, who is an accomplished musician. 
Although as stern a general as need be in battle, Omar 
is the reverse of a hard-hearted man: he cannot, in 
fact, witness human suffering without pain, and without 
doing all he can to relieve it. He seems devotedly 
attached to Turkey ; speaks hopefully of her future 
prospects ; exalts before foreigners what is good in her, 
extenuates what is bad. In talking of his army, he at 
times rises almost to enthusiasm ; his love for, and 
admiration of, his soldiers, indeed, are as unbounded as 
are theirs for him. 

Although, as we have said, Omar has abandoned the 
Christian faith for the Mussulman, it is but just to him 



OMAR PACHA. 145 

to say that he entertains none of that hatred of the 
community he has quitted, none of that rabid zealotry 
for that which he has joined, which distinguishes most 
renegades. On the contrary, he is as much the friend 
of Christians as he was when he was a Christian him- 
self. Not only does he not persecute them himself, but 
he will on no account allow them to be persecuted; 
nay, he will not tolerate the slightest wrong towards 
them. In the insurrections which he was required to 
put down, he watched over them with almost fraternal 
care ; and though he did not, and could not, prevent 
punishment from falling on them when they did amiss, 
he took pains to make them understand that they were 
punished, not as Christians, but as wrong-doers. His 
toleration and kindness towards his former co-believers 
have more than once subjected him to the vehement 
accusation from rabid Turks that, in spite of his pro- 
fession of Mussulmanism, he is no true son of the 
Prophet, but a Giaour after all. Perhaps the Turks 
are right. But this is a point which concerns only him 
and his God. 

Such is Omar Pacha, the quondam Michael Lattas ; 
such the extraordinary man who, by one single year's 
warfare^ has covered the Turkish arms with glory, and 
made his own name immortal. 



10 



146 



XIV. 

PEINCE MENS CHIK OFF. 

Menschikoff the First was, as everybody knows, 
the son of a pastrycook, was apprenticed to the pastry 
business, and was made by his loving father to hawk 
pastry about the streets of Moscow for sale. Consider- 
ing that he subsequently became the special favourite of 
the great Peter ; that he was created a Prince of the 
Empire, First Senator, and Field Marshal ; that he long 
exercised the supreme power of the State, though he 
could neither read nor write ; that he obtained estates 
larger than many a kingdom, and slaves who amounted 
to hundreds of thousands ; that he all but made the 
second Peter marry his daughter, and thereby nearly 
seated his family on the throne ; and that, last but not 
least, he robbed the State as it was never robbed before, 
and has rarely been robbed since — which is regarded as 
a great and noble exploit in Russia, where everybody 
steals as much as he can : — considering all this, it might 
have been thought that the present Prince Menschikoff 
would have been vastly proud of the humble origin of 
his great ancestor — for it is a glorious thing to have had 
a man of genius in the family. But no : the Prince is 
ashamed of the pastrycook ; and he has actually had the 



PRINCE IVEENSCIIIKOFF. 



147 



weakness to have drawn up a fantastical genealogical 
table, which represents — contrary to the voice of his- 
tory, contrary to tradition, contrary to innumerable 
archives of the Eussian Empire ■ — that Alexander Men- 
sehikoff, the founder of his family, was not a pastry- 
cook, and the son of a pastrycook, but a born gentle- 
man of distinguished lineage. And so sensitive is he 
on this point, that he cannot bear the slightest allusion 
to pastry in conversation ; he never allows any pastry 
to figure on his table ; he shuns the sight of a pastry- 
cook's shop as a mad dog does water ; and, if he had 
the power, he w r ould plunge schoolboys into despair by 
decreeing the absolute and universal suppression of 
tarts. 

Few noblemen are so wealthy as Prince MenschikofF. 
His estates are immense; his serfs innumerable; his 
funded property enormous ; his palaces more than 
princely : and, in addition to ail this, he holds some of 
the very highest and best paid places in the Empire- 
Minister of Marine, Governor of Sebastopoi, Governor 
of Finland, and we know not what besides. Perhaps, 
also, we might, without injustice, say that, like every 
other public functionary in Eussia, from the highest 
to the lowest, he makes no scruple of pillaging the 
State— indeed, that is confidently asserted at St, Pe- 
tersburgh : but, not being certain on the point, we say • 



148 THE MEN OF THE "WAR* 

it not. Even, however, without counting pillage as an 
item, it is certain that his revenue is vast, his fortune 
stupendous. 

But how does he spend it? Nobly, like a noble- 
man — in hospitality, in patronage of literature and 
art, in the encouragement of useful enterprises, in alle- 
viating the hard lot of his wretched serfs, in attempt- 
ing to spread civilisation in his barbarous country, in 
charity ? Or does he, like most of the Eussian aris- 
tocracy, indulge in tawdry luxury and display, and 
costly vanities, which, however despicable in themselves, 
and however ruinous to those who plunge into them, are 
at least advantageous to the community, by causing the 
rapid circulation and distribution of money ? Not he ; 
he does nothing of the kind. Earely, indeed, are his 
mansions thrown open for the reception of guests ; 
mean, indeed, considering his rank and wealth, is his 
style of living ; deaf, indeed, is he to the voice of cha- 
rity ; disdainful, indeed, is he of all that is useful to his 
country and his people, provided it be likely to cost him 
aught. 

In plain English, he is a miser ; not, it is true, a 
miser of the Harpagon class, who watches over candle- 
ends, and searches visitors' pockets, to see that they do 
not rob him ; but one who, as a prince, and as the occu- 
pant of some of the loftiest positions in the State, is 



PRINCE MENSCHIKOFF. 149 

obliged to maintain a certain establishment, yet is con- 
stantly groaning, 

How beauteous are rouleaux ! how charming chests, 
Containing ingots, bags of dollars ! 

and is constantly labouring to add rouleau to rouleau, 
chest to chest, ingot to ingot — by pinching here, and 
grasping there, and lending on usury, and overworking 
serfs, and exhausting the productive powers of lands, 
and overreaching when it can be done with safety, and 
doing everything that is mean and dishonourable. All 
St. Petersburgh rings with tales of his avarice; and 
everybody at St. Petersburgh, on account thereof, 
treats him with contempt and scorn. The Emperor, 
it is said, once rebuked him for not spending some por- 
tion of his great revenue in a style worthy of his ex- 
alted rank, " Sire," whined he piteously, " I am too 
poor l" 

Courtesy to distinguished foreigners is cheerfully paid 
by the aristocracy of every country in Europe ; but 
Prince Menschikoff treats them with insolent disdain. 
He hates the English, abhors the French, despises Ger- 
mans, and Italians, and Spaniards ; foreigners, in short, 
are his betes noires. It is asserted that he never of his 
own free will allowed one, on any pretext whatsoever, 
to cross his threshold ; and even ambassadors who have 
been years at St. Petersburgh have never received an 



150 THE MEN OF THE WAR. 

invitation from him* At Court receptions, and on other 
official occasions, it is with marked repugnance that he 
finds himself obliged to remain for a time in the same 
saloon as foreigners ; and when he can, he avoids speak- 
ing to them at all ; and when he dares, treats them 
with rudeness. In any other man of his high rank, this 
repugancc to strangers would be considered as a sort 
of insanity; but in him it is nothing more than old 
Bussian barbarism. 

A great noble who understands and is worthy of his 
position, is always polite to all who approach him, and 
condescending to his inferiors. In a high minister of 
state, as in royal princes, this politeness and conde- 
scension are a sacred duty. But Prince Mcnscliikoff is 
unmannerly in the extreme to those who are on an 
equality with him, and insolent in the extreme to those 
to whom he is inferior. His temper is execrable, and 
the slightest contradiction at times puts him into a 
violent fury. In his wrath he not unirequently smashes 
anything brittle that happens to lie near, and even uses 
his fists on those who offend him ! 

It is no rare tiling for him to keep personages of 
the highest distinction waiting in his antechamber be- 
yond all reasonable limits, and then to send them away 
without granting an audience. Sometimes even, when 
they come from a distance, he has the impudence to 



PRINCE MENSCHIKOFF. 151 

have them told that they may dine, if they like, at 
the table of his aides-de-camp. Anywhere else than in 
Eussia such conduct as this would soon be put an end 
to ; and would perhaps cause some very disagreeable 
lessons to be given to the author of it ; but in 
Eussia "Prince Menschikoff is a powerful personage, 
who can get people who displease him despatched to 
Siberia. 

The Prince is one of the basest courtiers at the court 
of the Czar; perhaps the very basest. His cringing, 
and suppleness, and skill in flattery, are proverbial in 
St. Petersburgh ; but he disguises them most cleverly 
beneath a certain affectation of off-hand bluntness or 
hrusqiierze, and this enables him to impose most com- 
pletely on the Emperor. His Majesty flatters himself 
that in the servile crew by whom he is surrounded 
there is at least one honest man who speaks his mind, 
and does not fear to tell him the truth — and that man 
is Menschikoff : whereas the Prince is the very last 
person in the Empire he should trust to, for it was by 
the courtiers' arts that he wormed himself into favour 
(he was detested by the Emperors brother and pre- 
decessor, Alexander), and by these arts that he has 
gained more real power than any Eussian has possessed 
of late years. Indeed, servility and adulation are the 
tradition of his family ; for it was by them, practised 



152 



THE HEN OF THE WAH. 



with such extraordinary ability, that his grandfather 
the pastrycook became a prince. 

The Prince has the reputation of being the wittiest 
man in St. Petersburgh, and his "good things" are 
constantly in everybody's mouth, as those of Sidney 
Smith used to be in the clubs of London. We have 
had the opportunity of hearing repeated some of his 
best bons mots, and some of his sharpest repartees ; but 
we find them singularly poor and vapid, and more than 
one of them presents the old familiar features of the 
French jest-book, or our own Joe Miller. On this 
point, however, it is almost impossible for a foreigner 
to form anything like a correct opinion ; inasmuch as 
wit depends so much on the language in which it is 
expressed as to be rarely translateable into another ; 
and inasmuch, also, as it depends greatly on the cir- 
cumstances under which it is uttered, the persons 
against whom it is levelled, and those to whom it is 
addressed. 

We are, therefore, not indisposed to concede the 
Prince's claim to wit, weak as it appears to us. At 
all events, there is no denying one thing : that he 
is as malignant a jester and as foul a backbiter as ever 
lived. Sir Mungo Malagrowther himself never said 
half such bitter things in a month as he says in a day ; 
and, for slandering his friends and acquaintances in 
their absence, he is equal to all the ladies and gentle- 
men of the " School for Scandal." 

Although in possession of boundless honours, the 
highest offices, and the loftiest dignities — although, in 



PRINCE MENSCHIKOFF. 



153 



fact, the most powerful man in all Russia except the 
Czar — the career of Prince Menschikoff has been sin- 
gularly insignificant. He was educated in Germany, 
and served for some years as a subaltern in the 
artillery. On the conclusion of peace he was employed 
in the War-office. Taken into favour by Czar Nicholas, 
he was sent on a mission to Persia to extort certain 
concessions, and amongst them a large tract of land. 
To gain his ends, he bullied, and swaggered, and was 
intolerably insolent ; but the Persians treated him sans 
ceremonie, and arrested him and all his suite. They 
detained him in custody nearly a month, and would 
probably have kept him much longer, if the English 
Minister had not good-naturedly taken him under his 
protection, and insisted on his release. He afterwards 
took part in the war of Russia against Turkey ; but, 
though he was intrusted with an important command, 
he totally failed to distinguish himself. The only 
adventure recorded of him in the whole course of the 
war is a ridiculous one, At the siege of Yarna, he was 
standing at what he thought a respectful distance — 
" 'tis distance lends enchantment to the view" — calmly 
contemplating the fighting ; his legs were wide apart 
(a favourite attitude, by the way, of Russian generals ; 
they think it makes them look terrible, and strikes 
terror into the foe), and he was quietly thrusting a 
huge pinch of snuff up his nose, when lo ! a cannon 
ball came whizzing along, and passed right through 
his legs. He fell, of course : but it turned out that 
he had sustained no other injury than having a little of 



154: 



THE MEN OF THE WAR. 



the flesh carried away. Owing, however, to this 
almost laughable accident, he has had an ungainly 
walk ever since! Although he was brought up to 
the army, always belonged to the army, got to be a 
general in the army, and did what little active service 
he has seen in the army, he was, some few years after 
the Yarna anair, made an admiral ; and as admiral was 
placed successively in command of the Baltic and the 
Black Sea fleets ! And as admiral he has served ever 
since ! The Russians gravely assert that he is one of 
the best seamen in the world ! But bah ! it is not at the 
age of sixty, and by a cruise or two in the Gulf of 
Finland or the Euxine, that seamanship can be learned, 
even by a Russian prince. 

This admiral-general is chief of the censorship, one 
of the most atrocious of the many abominable institu- 
tions of Russia. By means of the censorship the most 
profound intellectual darkness is maintained in the Em- 
pire ; and the few foreign books and the few foreign 
newspapers that are admitted are subjected to the 
most absurd mutilations. In fact, foreign publications 
are perfectly unreadable ; from books, chapters or parts 
of chapters, pages or parts of pages, are coolly cut 
away ; in newspapers, not only are entire paragraphs 
erased, but sentences, and parts of sentences, in the 
midst of an article, are erased also. By order of the 
Prince, too, certain words are entirely blotted out of 
the Russian dictionary ; or at least are not, under any 
circumstances, allowed to be used in Russia, even in a 
foreign language. The word liberty, for example, is 
one of them ; and all words having any affinity there- 



PRINCE MENSCHIKOFF. 



with are proscribed likewise. The Prince once very 
nearly sent a poor fellow to Siberia for having written, 
in a description of some machine, that the wheels moved 
freely. It is asserted also that he was once very nearly 
giving orders to have the words " Thy kingdom come/' 
struck out of the Lord's Prayer, " because/' said he 
sagaciously, " they seem to imply that people are not 
content with the reign of our august master, the Czar !" 

As governor of Finland, the Prince is supposed in 
Eussia to have rendered very eminent services. But the 
fact is, that he has ruled with such terrible, yet fantastic 
despotism, that he has made the very name of Russia 
almost universally abhorred in that unfortunate pro- 
vince. His object has been to break down the national 
sentiments of the Finns, to make them ^forget their 
national history, and to induce them even to give up 
the use of their national language, so as to cause them 
to become completely amalgamated with Russia, and, 
like the Russians, the most abject of slaves. In the 
execution of his schemes, he has not shrunk from en- 
deavouring to reduce the Finns to the same state of 
barbarous ignorance as his own countrymen ; and for 
this purpose has destroyed their literature, shut up 
their printing presses, closed their literary institutions, 
tainted their public education, and even proscribed the 
ballads of their ancestors. 

After all, the real importance of Prince Menschikoff 
does not arise from the exalted offices he nils, or from 
his great wealth, or past services, nor even from the 
Czar's favour, and least of all from superior political 
talent — for to that he has no claim — but simply and 



156 



THE MEN OF THE WAR. 



solely from the fact that he is the chief of the old 
Russian party. This party consists of nine-tenths of 
the boyards, of all the clergy, and of the great mass of 
the serfs, if the serfs be worthy of being counted. Its 
object is, to use its own expression, to keep Russia 
Russian ; and it accordingly hates civilisation and en- 
lightenment, and consequently the West of Europe, 
with a hatred so blind and ferocious as to be perfectly 
barbaric. Yet this party it is which has the wild pre- 
sumption to suppose that Russia is some day destined 
to overrun and subjugate all the civilised nations of the 
world, as the barbarians did the ancient empire of 
Rome. And this party it was which caused Menschi- 
koff to be sent to Constantinople to, as it fondly be- 
lieved, prepare the way for a war which should be the 
commencement of this great enterprise, by the destruc- 
tion and absorption of the Sultan's dominions. 

Prince MenschikofF is, with the exception of his im- 
perial master, one of the most unfortunate men in 
Europe. The war which he counselled, and which he 
angrily excited, has, though only a few months old, 
not, as he madly believed, covered the Russian arms 
with glory, but has brought on them everlasting dis- 
grace; it has not, as he had hoped, carried him in 
triumph to Constantinople, but has driven him with in- 
famy to what he thought an impregnable fortress, and 
has defeated him even there ! 



WADE, PEIXTEE, BEYDGE3-STREET, STRAND. 



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